LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

dljap, Copyright ^ 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



I 

I 



F-RO/VV THE 



Pyramids 



TO THE / ^ 



Acropolis 



5aered piaees Seei? Jtyrotiqty Biblical 
$peetaeles 




■By 



7 



T. DE WITT TALMAGE 



Philadelphia ! 392 

Historical Publishing Company 



1892 



$37 VfX 1 



Copyright 
By H. S. SMITH, 
1892. 

All rights reserved, 



Press and Bindery 
Historical Publishing Company, 
Philadelphia. 



CO/NT E/NTS. 



PAGE 

Preface . . = 21 



I. The Gospel of the Pyramids 27 

II. Sailing up the Nile 54 

III. Bricks Without Straw 81 

IV. Malta and No Little Kindness .... 108 

V. The Gospel Archipelago . '', 135 

VI. A Patmos Vision of a Book 159 

VII. A Patmos Vision of Gates 181 

VIII. A Patmos Vision of Silence 204 

IX. A Patmos Vision of Pain Banished . . 226 

X. The Temple of Diana 242 

XI. The Acropolis 266 

(xix) 



PREFACE. 



What the reader will find in subsequent 
pages is the result of impressions produced on 
my mind by a visit to lands made sacred by 
Biblical association. Every day of my journey 
amid these scenes of Gospel classics, I felt 
regret that I had not seen them many years 
before; but it was a satisfaction to me to find 
that early in life I had been enabled to form 
mental pictures of them so far adequate as to 
prevent mistakes in my attempts to describe 

(xxi) 



xxii Preface, 

them. How much more graphic could I 
have been, however, had my actual observa- 
tion of them been accomplished at an early 
period in my ministry! I hope earnestly that 
the time may come when a visit to Athens will 
be made a part of collegiate education, and a 
visit to Egypt and the Holy Land a part of 
theological education. Both culture and re- 
ligion would be large gainers by such addition 
to the means of preparation for a useful life. 

I found the New Testament the one indis- 
pensable guide in my visit to the sacred places 
of the East. What Bradshaw's Guide is to 
European travellers, and what Appleton's and 
Rand's Railroad Guides are to American 
travellers, the New Testament is to those who 
would walk or sail the places connected with 
events Paulinian, Johannian, and Christly. 
A prevalent mistake is, that the sacred places 
are interesting only because they are Biblical. 



I if ; - ■ * - 

Preface. xxiii 

So far from this being the case, if Moses had 
never led Israel out of Egypt, and if Paul 
had never been shipwrecked, and if John had 
never been exiled to Patmos, all the places 
mentioned in this book would be absorbing, 
or inspiring, or solemnizing, or in some way 
mightily suggestive. Such rivers, such seas, 
such rocks, such archipelagoes! But when 
you add to their natural attractions the holy 
reminiscences which they excite, those places 
hold you with a power that will never relax. 

There were circumstances which made me 
peculiarly receptive of sacred impressions at 
the time of my visit to the regions which are 
the subjects of this book. A burning church 
occupied my mind, yea, two burning churches, 
for we had seen two churches in conflagration. 
My imagination was filled with a third church, 
the ground for which I had broken the last 
thing before taking ship. The vivid memory 



xxiv Preface. 

of two destroyed churches, and the uncertain- 
ties concerning the building of a third church 
in the same city and under the same pastorate, 
possessed me, and put me in that emotional 
frame of mind the most favorable to religious 
observation and reflection. What I saw and 
felt I can never fully tell, but this book re- 
produces vivid memories and experiences as I 
have found my best ability to relate them. 

I ask the prayers of all who know how to 
pray, for the practical usefulness of this work, 
4 1 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 1 ' 
No one can foretell what will be the life of a 
book any more than what will be the life of 
an individual, but as there is no cessation of 
the generous interest Yvdth which the public 
receive my productions, and as there seems to 
be indeed a marvellously increased kindness 
toward what I write and say, I keep on, and 
now add this little volume to the works 



Preface. xxv 

which, by the goodness of God and the 
encouragement of the public, I have been 
enabled to send out. 

T. De Witt Talmage. 

Brooklyn, N. Y. 



2Tfjr Gospel of tf)e Pgramtos. 



"In that day shall there be an altar to the Lord 
in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the 
border thereof to the Lord. And it shall be for a 
sign and for a witness." Isaiah xix : 19, 20. 



TSAIAH no doubt here refers to the great 
Pyramid at Gizeh, the chief Pyramid of 
Egypt. The text speaks of a pillar in Egypt, 
and this is the greatest pillar ever lifted ; and 
the text says it is to be at the border of the 
land, and this Pyramid is at the border of the 
land ; and the text says it shall be for a wit- 
ness, and the object of this sermon is to tell 
what this Pyramid witnesses. 

We had on a morning of December, 1889, 
landed in Africa. Amid the howling boat- 
men at Alexandria we had come ashore and 

(27) 



28 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 



taken the rail train for Cairo, Egypt, along 
the banks of the most thoroughly harnessed 
river of all the world — the river Nile. We 
had, at even-tide, entered the city of Cairo, 
the city where Christ dwelt while staying in 
Egypt during the Herodic persecution. It 
was our first night in Egypt. Xo destroying 
angel sweeping through, as once, but all the 
stars were out, and the skies were filled with 
angels of beauty and angels of light, and the 
air was as balmy as an American June. The 
next morning we were early awake and at the 
window, looking upon palm trees in full glory 
of leafage, and upon gardens of fruits and 
flowers at the very season when our homes far 
away are canopied by bleak skies and the last 
leaf of the forest has gone down in the 
equinoctials. 

But how can I describe the thrill of expec- 
tation, for to-day we are to see what all the 
world has seen or wants to see — the Pyramids. 
We are mounted for an hour and a half's ride. 



The Gospel of the Pyramids. 29 

We pass on amid bazaars stuffed with rugs 
and carpets, and curious fabrics of all sorts 
from Smyrna, from Algiers, from Persia, from 
Turkey, and through streets where we 
meet people of all colors and all garbs, carts 
loaded with garden productions, priests in 
gowns, women in black veils, Bedouins in 
long and seemingly superfluous apparel, Jan- 
issaries in jacket of embroidered gold — out 
and on toward the Great Pyramid ; for though 
there are sixty-nine Pyramids still standing, 
the Pyramid at Gizeh is the monarch of Pyra- 
mids. We meet camels grunting under their 
load, and see buffaloes on either side, brow- 
sing in pasture fields. The road we travel is 
for part of the way under clumps of acacia, 
and by long rows of sycamore and tamarisk, 
but after awhile it is a path of rock and sand, 
and we find we have reached the margin of 
the desert, the great Sahara Desert, and we 
cry out to the dragoman as we see a huge pile 
of rock looming in sight : 4 4 Dragoman, what 



30 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

is that?" His answer is, " The Pyramid, V 
and then it seemed as if we were living a 
centurv even' minute. Our thoughts and 
emotions were too rapid and intense for utter- 
ance, and we ride on in silence until we come 
to the foot of the Pyramid spoken of in the 
text, the oldest structure in all the earth, four 
thousand years old at least. Here it is. We 
stand under the shadow of a structure that 
shuts out all the earth and all the sky, and we 
look up and strain our vision to appreciate 
the distant top, and are overwhelmed while 
we cry, " The Pyramid ! The Pyramid ! " 

I had started that morning with the deter- 
mination of ascending the Pyramid. One of 
my chief objects in going to Egypt was not 
only to see the base of that granitic wonder, 
but to stand on the top of it. Yet the nearer 
I came to this eternity in stone the more my de- 
termination was shaken. Its altitude to me was 
simply appalling. A great height has always 
been to me a most disagreeable sensation. 



The Gospel of the Pyramids. 31 

As we dismounted at the base of the Pyramid I 
said, ' ' Others may go up it, but not I. I will 
satisfy myself with a view from the base. 
The ascent of it would be to me a foolhardy 
undertaking. ' ' But after I had given up all 
idea of ascending, I found my daughter was 
determined to go, and I could not let her go 
with strangers, and I changed my mind and 
we started with guides. It cannot be done 
without these helpers. Two or three times 
foolhardy men have attempted it alone, but 
their bodies came tumbling down unrecogniza- 
ble and lifeless. Each person in our party 
had two or three guides or helpers. One of 
them unrolled his turban and tied it around 
my waist, and he held the other end of the 
turban as a matter of safety. Many of the 
blocks of stone are four or five feet high and 
beyond any ordinary human stride unless as- 
sisted. But, two Arabs to pull and two Arabs 
to push, I found myself rapidly ascending 
from height to height, and on, to altitudes 



32 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis, 

terrific, and at last at the tip top we found 
ourselves on a level space of about thirty feet 
square. Through clearest atmosphere we 
looked off upon the desert, and the Sphinx 
with its features of everlasting stone, and 
yonder upon the minarets of Cairo glittering 
in the sun, and yonder upon Memphis in ruins, 
and off- upon the wreck of empires and the 
battle-fields of ages, a radius of view enough 
to fill the mind and overwhelm one's entire 
being. 

After looking around for a while, and a ko- 
dak had pictured the group, we descended. 
The descent was more trying than the ascent, 
for climbing you need not see the depths be- 
neath, but coming down it was impossible not 
to see the abysms below. But two Arabs 
ahead to help us down, and two Arabs to hold 
us back, we were lowered, hand below hand, 
until the ground was invitingly near, and 
amid the jargon of the Arabs we were safely 
landed. 



The Gospel of the Pyramids. 33 

I said the dominant color of tfie Pyramid 
was gray, but in certain lights it seems to 
shake off the gray of centuries and become a 
blonde and the silver turns to the golden. It 
covers thirteen acres of ground. What an 
antiquity ! It was at least two thousand years 
old when the baby Christ was carried within 
sight of it by his fugitive parents, Joseph 
and Mary. The storms of forty centuries 
have drenched it, bombarded it, shadowed it, 
flashed upon it, but there it stands ready to 
take another forty centuries of atmospheric 
attack if the world should continue to exist. 
The oldest buildings of the earth are juniors 
to this great senior of the centuries. Hero- 
dotus says that for ten years preparations were 
being made for the building of this Pyramid. 
It has eighty-two million one hundred and 
eleven thousand cubic feet of masonry. One 
hundred thousand workmen at one time toiled 
in its erection. To bring the stone from the 
quarries a causeway sixty feet wide was built. 
3 



34 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

The top stones were lifted by machinery such 
as the world knows nothing of to-day. It is 
seven hundred and forty-six feet each side of 
the square base. The structure is four hun- 
dred and fifty feet high, higher than the cathe- 
drals of Cologne, Strasburg, Rouen, St. 
Peter's and St. Paul's. No surprise to me 
that it was put at the head of the Seven Won- 
ders of the World. It has a subterraneous 
room of red granite called the " King's Cham- 
ber," and another room called the u Queen's 
Chamber," and the probability is that there 
are other rooms yet unexplored. The evident 
design of the architect was to make these 
rooms as inaccessible as possible. After all 
the work of exploration and all the digging and 
blasting, if you would enter these subterrane- 
ous rooms you must go through a passage only 
three feet eleven inches high and less than 
four feet wide. A sarcophagus of red granite 
stands down under this mountain of masonry. 
The sarcophagus could not have been carried 



The Gospel of the Pyramids. 35 

in after the Pyramid was built. It must have 
been put there before the structure was reared. 
Probably in that sarcophagus once lay a 
wooden coffin containing a dead king, but 
time has destroyed the coffin and destroyed 
the last vestige of human remains. 

I wonder not that this mountain of lime- 
stone and red granite has been the fascination 
of scholars, of scientists, of intelligent Chris- 
tians in all ages. Sir John Herschel, the as- 
tronomer, said he thought it had astronomical 
significance. The wise men who accompanied 
Napoleon's army into Egypt went into pro- 
found study of the Pyramid. In 1865, P ro " 
fessor Smyth and his wife lived in the empty 
tombs near by the Pyramid that they might 
be as continuously as possible close to the 
Pyramid, which they were investigating. The 
Pyramid, built more than four thousand years 
ago, being a complete geometrical figure, wise 
men have concluded it must have been di- 
vinely constructed. Man came through thou- 



36 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

sands of years to fine architecture, to music, to 
painting, but this was perfect at the world's 
start, and God must have directed it. All as- 
tronomers and geometricians and scientists say 
that it was scientifically and mathematically con- 
structed before science and mathematics were 
born. From the inscriptions on the Pyramid, 
from its proportions, from the points of the com- 
pass recognized in its structure, from the direc- 
tion in which its tunnels run, from the relative 
position of the blocks that compose it, scien- 
tists, Christians and infidels have demonstrated 
that the being who planned this Pyramid 
must have known the world's sphericity, and 
that its motion was rotatory, and how many 
miles it was in diameter and circumference, 
and how many tons the world weighs, and 
knew at what point in the heavens certain 
stars would appear at certain periods of time. 
Not in the four thousand years since the put- 
ting up of that Pyramid has a single fact in 
astronomy or mathematics been found to con- 



The Gospel of the Pyramids. 



37 



tradict the wisdom of that structure. Yet 
they had not at the age when the Pyramid 
was started an astronomer or an architect or a 
mathematician worth mentioning. Who then 
planned the Pyramid? Who superintended 
its erection ? Who from its first foundation 
stone to its capstone erected everything ? It 
must have been God. Isaiah was right when 
he said in my text, 4 4 A pillar shall be at the bor- 
der of the land of Egypt and it shall be for a 
sign and a witness." The Pyramid is God's 
first Bible. Hundreds, if not thousands of 
years, before the first line of the Book of 
Genesis was written, the lesson of the Pyramid, 
was written. I 

Well, of what is this Cyclopean masonry a 
sign and a witness ? Among other things, of 
the prolongation of human work compared with 
the brevity of human life. In all the four 
thousand years this Pyramid has lost only eigh- 
teen feet in width, one side of its square at the 
base changed only from seven hundred and 



38 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

sixty-four feet to seven hundred and forty-six 
feet and the most of that eighteen feet taken off 
by architects to furnish stone for building in 
the city of Cairo. The men who constructed the 
Pyramid worked at it only a few years and 
then put down the trowel and the compass and 
the square and lowered the derrick which 
had lifted the ponderous weights ; but forty 
centuries has their work stood and it will be 
good for forty centuries more. Ail Egypt has 
been shaken by terrible earthquakes and cities 
have been prostrated or swallowed, but that 
Pyramid has defied all volcanic paroxysms. 
It has looked upon some of the greatest bat- 
tles ever fought since the world stood. Where 
are the men who constructed it ? Their bod- 
ies gone to dust and even the dust scattered. 
Even the sarcophagus in which the king's 
mummy may have slept is empty. 

So men die but their work lives on. We 
are all building pyramids, not to last four thou- 
sand years, but forty thousand, forty mil- 



The Gospel of the Pyramids, 39 

lion, forty trillion, forty quadrillion, forty 
quintillion. For a while we wield the trowel 
or pound with the hammer or measure with 
the yard-stick or write with the pen, or ex- 
periment with the scientific battery, or plan 
with the brain, and for a while the foot walks 
and the eye sees, and the ear hears and the 
tongue speaks. All the good words or bad 
words we speak are spread out into one layer 
for a pyramid. All the kind deeds or malevo- 
lent deeds we do are spread out into another 
layer. All the Christian or unchristian exam- 
ple we set is spread out in another layer. All 
the indirect influences of our lives are spread out 
in another layer. Then the time soon comes 
when we put down the implement of toil and 
pass away, but the pyramid stands. The twen- 
tieth century will not rock it down, nor the 
thirtieth century nor the one hundredth cen- 
tury. The earthquake that rocks this world 
to pieces will not stop our influence for good 
or evil. You modestly say, 4 4 That is true in 



4-0 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

regard to the great workers for good or evil, 
and of gigantic geniuses, Miltonian, or Tal- 
leyrandian, but not of me, for I live and work 
on a small scale. ' ' My hearer, remember that 
those who built the Pyramids were common 
workmen. Not one of them could lift one of 
those great stones. It took a dozen of them 
to lift one stone, and others just wielded a 
trowel, clicking it on the hard edge or smooth- 
ing the mortar between the layers. One hun- 
dred thousand men toiled on those sublime 
elevations. Cheops didn't build the Pyra- 
mid. Some master mason in the world's twi- 
light didn't build the Pyramid. One hun- 
dred thousand men built it and perhaps from 
first to last two hundred thousand men. So 
with the pyramids now rising, pyramids of 
evil or pyramids of good. The pyramid of 
drunkenness rising ever since the time when 
Noah got drunk on wine, although there was 
at his time such a superabundance of water. 
All the saloonists of the ages adding their 



The Gospel of the Pyramids. 41 



layers of ale casks and wine pitchers and rum 
jugs until the pyramid overshadows the Great 
Sahara Desert of desolated homes, and broken 
hearts, and destroyed eternities. And as the 
pyramid still rises, layers of human skulls 
piled on top of human skulls and other moun- 
tains of human bones to whiten the peaks 
reaching unto the heavens, hundreds of thou- 
sands of people are building that pyramid. 
So with the pyramid of righteousness. Mul- 
titudes of hands are toiling on the steeps, 
hands infantile, hands octogenarian, mascu- 
line hands, female hands, strong hands, weak 
hands. Some clanging a trowel, some pulling 
a rope, some measuring the sides. Layers of 
psalm books on top of layers of sermons. 
Layers of prayers on top of layers of holy 
sacrifice. And hundreds of thousands coming 
down to sleep their last sleep, but other hun- 
dreds of thousands going up to take their 
places, and the pyramids will continue to rise 
until the millennial morning gilds the com- 



42 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

pleted work, and the toilers on these heights 
shall take off their aprons and throw down 
their trowels, crying, 44 It is finished. ' ' 

Your business and mine is not to build a 
pyramid but to be one of the hundreds of 
thousands who shall ring a trowel, or pull a 
rope, or turn the crank of a derrick, or cry 
4 4 Yo heave ! 1 } while lifting another block to 
its elevation. Though it be seemingly a 
small work and a brief work, it is a work that 
shall last forever. In the last day many a 
man and woman whose work has never been 
recognized on earth will come to a special 
honor. I rejoice that all the thousands who 
have been toiling on the pyramid of right- 
eousness will at last be recognized and re- 
warded — the mother who brought her chil- 
dren to Christ, the Sabbath teacher who 
brought her class to the knowledge of the 
truth, the unpretending man who saved a 
soul. Then the trowel will be more honored 
than the sceptre. As a great battle was going 



The Gospel of the Pyramids, 43 

on the soldiers were ordered to the front and a 
sick man jumped out of an ambulance in 
which he was being carried to the hospital. 
The surgeon asked him what he meant by 
getting out of the ambulance when he was 
sick and almost ready to die. The soldier 
answered, " Doctor, I am going to the front ; 
I would rather die on the field than die in an 
ambulance. " Thank God, if we cannot do 
much we can do a little. 

The Pyramid is a sign and a witness that 
big tombstones are not the best way of keep- 
ing one's self affectionately remembered. 
This Pyramid and sixty-nine other Pyramids 
still standing were built for sepulchres, all 
this great pile of granite and limestone by 
which we stand to-day, to cover the memory 
of a dead king. It was the great Westminster 
Abbey of the ancients. Some say that Cheops 
was the king who built this Pyramid, but it 
is uncertain. Who, pray, was Cheops ? All 
that the world knows about him could be told 



44 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 



in a few sentences. The only tiling certain is 
that he was bad and that he shut up the tem- 
ples of worship and that he was hated so that 
the Egyptians were glad when he was dead. 
This Pyramid of rock seven hundred and forty 
feet each side of the square base and four 
hundred and fifty feet high wins for him no 
respect. If a bone of his arm or foot had 
been found in the sarcophagus beneath the 
Pyramid, it would have excited no more ven- 
eration than the skeleton of a camel bleach- 
ing on the Libyan desert ; yea, less veneration, 
for when I saw the carcase of a camel by the 
roadside on the way to Memphis, I said to my- 
self, is Poor thing, I wonder of what it died." 
We say nothing against the marble or the 
bronze of the necropolis. Let all that sculp- 
ture and florescence and arborescence can do 
for the places of the dead be done, if means 
will allow it. But if after one is dead there 
is nothing left to remind the world of him 
but some pieces of stone, there is but little 



The Gospel of the Pyramids. 45 

left. Some of the finest monuments are over 
people who amounted to nothing while they 
lived, while some of the worthiest men and 
women have not had above them a stone big 
enough to tell their name. Joshua, the great- 
est warrior the world ever saw, no monument; 
Moses, the greatest lawyer that ever lived, no 
monument ; Paul, the greatest preacher that 
ever lived, no monument ; Christ, the Saviour 
of the world and the rapture of heaven, no 
monument. A Pyramid over scoundrelly 
Cheops, but only a shingle with a lead pencil 
epitaph over many a good man's grave. 
Some of the finest obituaries have been 
printed about the worst rascals. To-day at 
Brussels there is a pyramid of flowers on the 
grave of Boulanger, the notorious libertine. 
Yet it is natural to want to be remembered. 

While there seems to be no practical use 
for post-mortem consideration later than the 
time of one's great grand-children, yet no one 
wants to be forgotten as soon as the obsequies 



46 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

are over. This Pyramid, which Isaiah says 
is a sign and a witness, demonstrates that 
neither limestone nor red granite are compe- 
tent to keep one affectionately remembered ; 
neither can bronze ; neither can Parian mar- 
ble ; neither can Aberdeen granite do the 
work. But there is something out of which 
to build an everlasting monument and that 
will keep one freshly remembered four thou- 
sands years ; yea, for ever and ever. It does 
not stand in marble yards. It is not to be 
purchased at mourning stores. Yet it is to be 
found in every neighborhood, plenty of it, in- 
exhaustible quantities of it. It is the great- 
est stuff in the universe to build monuments 
out of. I refer to the memories of those to 
whom we can do a kindness, the memories of 
those whose struggles we may alleviate, the 
memories of those whose souls we may save. 
All around Cairo and Memphis there are the 
remains of Pyramids that have gone down 
under the wearing away of time, and the 



The Gospel of the Pyramids. 47 

Great Pyramid, of which Isaiah in the text 
speaks, will vanish if the world lasts long 
enough ; and if the world does not last, then 
with the earth's dissolution the Pyramid will 
also dissolve. But the memories of those 
with whom we associate are indestructible. 
They will be more vivid the other side of the 
grave than this side. It is possible for me to 
do you a good and for you to do me a good 
that will be vivid in memory as many years 
after the world is burned up as all the sands 
of the seashore and all the leaves of the for- 
est and all the grass blades of the field and 
all the stars of heaven added together, and 
that aggregate multiplied by all the figures 
that all the bookkeepers of all time ever 
wrote. 

That desire to be remembered after we are 
gone is a divinely implanted desire and not to 
be crushed out, but, I implore you, seek some- 
thing better than the immortalization of 
rock, or bronze or book. Put yourself into 



48 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

the eternity of those whom you help for both 
worlds, this and the next. Comfort a hun- 
dred souls and there will be through all the 
cycles of eternity at least a hundred souls that 
will be your monuments. A prominent mem- 
ber of this church was brought to God by 
some one saying to her at the church door at 
the close of service, ' 1 Come again ! ' ' Will 
it be possible for that one so invited to forget 
the inviter? A minister passing along the 
street every day looked up and smiled to a 
baby in the window. The father and mother 
wondered who it was that thus pleasantly 
greeted their child. They found out that he 
was the pastor of a church. They said, " We 
must go and hear him preach. 1 ' They went and 
heard him and both were converted to God. 
Will there be any power in fifty million years 
to erase from the souls of those parents the 
memory of that man who by his friendliness 
brought them to God ? Matthew Cranswick, 
an evangelist, said that he had the names of 



The Gospel of the Pyramids. 49 



two hundred souls saved through his singing 
the hymn, { 1 Arise, my soul, arise ! ' ' Will 
any of those two hundred souls in all eternity 
forget Matthew Cranswick ? Will any of the 
four hundred and seventy-nine women and 
children imprisoned at L,ucknow, India, wait- 
ing for massacre by the Sepoys, forget Have- 
lock and Outran, and Sir David Beard, who 
broke in and effected their rescue ? To some 
of you who have loved and served the Lord, 
heaven will be a great picture gallery of re- 
membrance. Hosts of the glorified will never 
forget you. Ah, that is a way of building 
monuments that will never feel the touch of 
decay. I do not ask you to suppress this nat- 
ural desire of being remembered after you are 
gone, but I only want you to put your memor- 
ials into a shape that will never weaken nor 
fade. During the course of my ministry I 
have been intimately associated in Christian 
work with hundreds of good men and women. 
My memory is hung with their portraits more 

4 



50 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

accurate and vivid than anything that Rem- 
brandt ever put on canvas : — Father Grice, 
DeWitt C. Moore, Father Voorhees, E. P. 
Hopkins, William Stephens, John Van Rens- 
selaer, Gasherie DeWitt, Dr. Ward, and hun- 
dreds of others all of them gone out of this life, 
but I hold the memory- of them and shall hold 
them forever. They cannot escape from me. 
I shall remember them just as they looked on 
earth, and I shall remember many of you af- 
ter the earth has been an extinct planet for 
ages infinite. Oh, what stuff the memory is 
for monument building ! 

As in Egypt that December afternoon, 1889, 
exhausted in body, mind, and soul, we 
mounted to return to Cairo, we took our last 
look of the Pyramid at Gizeh. Amd you 
know there is something in the air toward 
evening that seems productive of solemn and 
tender emotion, and that Great Pyramid 
seemed to be humanized and with lips of stone 
it seemed to speak and cry out : c 1 Hear me, 



The Gospel of the Pyramids, 51 

man, mortal and immortal ! My voice is the 
voice of God. He designed me. Isaiah said 
I should be a sign and a witness. I saw Mo- 
ses when he was a lad. I witnessed the long 
procession of the Israelites as they started to 
cross the Red Sea and Pharaoh's host in pur- 
suit of them. The falcons and the eagles of 
many centuries have brushed my brow. I 
stood here when Cleopatra's barge landed with 
her sorceries, and Hypatia for her virtues was 
slain in yonder streets. Alexander the Great, 
Sesostris and Ptolemy admired my propor- 
tions. Herodotus and Pliny sounded my praise. 
I am old, I am very old. For thousands 
of years I have watched the coming and go- 
ing of generations. They tarry only a little 
while, but they make everlasting impression. 
I bear on my side the mark of the trowel and 
chisel of those who more than four thousand 
years ago expired. Beware what you do, oh, 
man ! for what you do will last long after you 
are dead ! If you would be affectionately re- 



52 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

membered after you are gone, trust not to any 
earthly commemoration. I have not one word 
to say about any astronomer who studied the 
heavens from my heights or any king w r ho was 
sepulchred in my bosom. I am slowly pass- 
ing away. I am a dying Pyramid. I shall 
yet lie down in the dust of the plain and the 
sands of the desert shall cover me, or when 
the earth goes I shall go. But you are immor- 
tal. The feet with which you climbed my 
sides to-day will turn to dust, but you have a 
soul that will outlast me and all my brother- 
hood of Pyramids. Live for eternity ! Live 
for God ! With the shadows of the evening 
now falling from my side, I pronounce upon 
you a benediction. Take it with you across 
the Mediterranean. Take it wnth you across 
the Atlantic. God only is great ! Let all the 
earth keep silence before Him. Amen." 
And then the lips of granite hushed, and the 
great giant of masonry wrapped himself again 
in the silence of ages, and as I rode away 



The Gospel of the Pyramids. 53 



in the gathering twilight, this course of ser- 
mons was projected. 

"Wondrous Egypt ! L,and of ancient pomp and pride, 
Where Beauty walks by hoary Ruin's side, 
Where plenty reigns and still the seasons smile, 
And rolls — rich gift of God — exhaustless Nile." 



failing up tfje TSFtle. 



"The river is mine, and I have made it." — Bzekiel 
xxix : 9. 



HA ! This is the river Nile. A brown, 
or yellow, or silver cord on which are 
hung more jewels of thrilling interest than on 
any river that was ever twisted in the sun- 
shine. It ripples through the book of Ezekiel, 
and flashes in the books of Deuteronomy and 
Isaiah and Zechariah and Nahum, and on 
its banks stood the mightiest of many ages. 
It was the crystal cradle of Moses, and on its 
banks, Mary, the refugee, carried the infant 
Jesus. To find the birthplace of this river 
was the fascination and defeat of expeditions 
without number. Not many years ago, Bayard 

(54) 



Sailing up the Nile. 



55 



Taylor, our great American traveller, wrote: 
( ' Since Columbus first looked upon San Salva- 
dor, the earth has but one emotion of triumph 
left for her bestowal, and that she reserves for 
him who shall first drink from the fountains 
of the White Nile under the snow fields of 
Kilimanjaro." But the discovery of the 
sources of the Nile by most people was con- 
sidered an impossibility. The malarias, the 
wild beasts, the savages, the unclimbable 
steeps, the vast distances, stopped all the 
expeditions for ages. An intelligent native 
said to Sir Samuel W. Baker and wife as they 
were on their way to accomplish that in which 
others had failed : 4 ' Give up the mad scheme 
of the Nile source. How would it be possible 
for a lady young and delicate to endure what 
would kill the strongest man ? Give it up. ' ' 
But the work went on until Speke, and Grant, 
and Baker found the two lakes which are the 
source of what was called the White Nile, and 
baptized these two lakes with the names of 



56 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

Victoria and Albert. These two lakes, filled 
by great rainfalls and by accumulated snows 
from the mountains, pour their waters, laden 
with agricultural wealth such as blesses no 
other river, on down over the cataracts, on 
between frowning mountains, on between 
cities living and cities dead, on for four thou- 
sand miles and through a continent. But the 
White Nile would do little for Egypt if this 
were all. It would keep its banks and Egypt 
would remain a desert. But from Abyssinia 
there comes w r hat is called the Blue Nile, 
which, though dry or nearly dry half the year, 
under tremendous rains about the middle of 
June rises to great momentum, and this Blue 
Nile dashes with sudden influx into the White 
Nile, which in consequence rises thirty feet, 
and their combined waters inundate Egypt 
with a rich soil which drops on all the fields 
and gardens as it is conducted by ditches, and 
sluices, and canals every whither. The great- 
est damage that ever came to Egypt came by 



Sailing tip the Nile, 



57 



the drying up of the river Nile, and the great- 
est blessing by its healthful and abundant 
flow. The famine in Joseph's time came from 
the lack of sufficient inundation from the 
Nile. Not enough Nile is drouth, too much 
Nile is freshet and plague. The rivers of the 
earth are the mothers of its prosperity. If by 
some convulsion of nature the Mississippi 
should be taken from North America, or the 
Amazon from South America, or the Danube 
from Europe, or the Yenesei from Asia — what 
hemispheric calamity! Still there are other 
rivers that could fertilize and save these coun- 
tries. Our own continent is gulched, is rib- 
boned, is glorified by innumerable water- 
courses. But Egypt has only one great river, 
and that is harnessed to draw all the prosperi- 
ties of realms in acreage semi-infinite. What 
happens to the Nile, happens to Egypt. The 
Nilometer was to me very suggestive as we 
went up and down its damp stone steps and 
saw the pillar marked with inches telling just 



58 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis, 

how high or low are the waters of the Nile. 
When the Nile is rising, four criers every 
morning run through the city announcing how 
many feet the river has risen — ten feet, fifteen 
feet, twenty feet, twenty-four feet; and when 
the right height of water is reached the gates 
of the canals are flung open and the liquid and 
refreshing benediction is pronounced on all 
the land. 

As we start where the Nile empties into the 
Mediterranean Sea we behold a wonderful 
fulfilment of prophecy. The Nile in very 
ancient times used to have seven mouths. As 
the great river approached the sea it entered 
the sea at seven different places. Isaiah 
prophesied, ( 4 The Lord shall utterly destroy 
the tongue of the Egyptian Sea and shall smite 
it in the seven streams. ' 1 The fact is they are 
all destroyed but two, and Herodotus said 
these two remaining are artificial. Up the 
Nile we shall go: part of the way by Egyp- 
tian rail train and then by boat, and we shall 



Sailing up the Nile, 



59 



understand why the Bible gives such promi- 
nence to this river which is the largest river of 
all the earth, with one exception. But before 
we board the train we must take a look at 
Alexandria. It was founded by Alexander the 
Great and was once the New York, the Paris, 
the I/)ndon of the world. Temples, palaces, 
fountains, gardens, pillared and efflorescent 
with all architectural and Edenic grandeur 
and sweetness. Apollos, the eloquent, whom 
in New Testament times some people tried to 
make a rival to Paul, lived here. Here Mark, 
the author of the second book of the New 
Testament, expired under Nero's anathema. 
From here the ship sailed that left Paul and 
the crew struggling in the breakers of Melita. 
Pompey's Pillar is here, about one hundred 
feet high, its base surrounded by so much 
filth and squalor I was glad to escape into an 
air that was breathable. This tower was built 
in honor of Diocletian for sparing the rebel- 
lious citizens. After having declared that he 



6o From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

would make the blood run to his horse's 
knees, his horse falling with him into the 
blood and his knees being reddened, the tyrant 
took it for granted that was a sign he should 
stop the massacre and hence this commemora- 
tive pillar to his mercy. This is the city to 
which Omar came after building fourteen hun- 
dred mosques, and destroying four thousand 
temples and thirty-five thousand villages and 
castles, yet riding in on a camel with a sack 
of corn, a sack of figs and a wooden plate, all 
that he had kept for himself; and the diet to 
which he had limited himself for most of the 
time was bread and water. Was there ever in 
any other man a commingling of elements so 
strange, so weird, so generous, so cruel, so 
mighty, so weak, so religious, so fanatical ? 
In this city was the greatest female lecturer 
the world ever saw — Hypatia. But the les- 
sons of virtue that she taught were obnoxious, 
and so they dragged her through the streets 
and scraped her flesh from her bones with 



Sailing up the Nile. 



61 



sharp oyster shells and then burned the frag- 
ments of the massacred body. And here 
dwelt Cleopatra, pronounced to be the beauty 
of all time — although if her pictures are cor- 
rect I have seen a thousand women in Brook- 
lyn more attractive — and she was as bad as 
she was said to be handsome. Queen, con- 
queress, and spoke seven languages, although 
it would have been better for the world if she 
had not been able to speak any. Julius Caesar 
conquered the world, yet she conquered Julius 
Caesar. 

But Alexandria, fascinating for this or that 
thing, according to the taste of the visitor, was 
to me most entertaining because it had been 
the site of the greatest library that the world 
ever saw, considering the fact that the art of 
printing had not been invented. Seven hun- 
dred thousand volumes and all the work of a 
slow pen. But down it all went under the 
torch of besiegers. Built again and destroyed 
again. Built again, but the Arabs came along 



62 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

for its final demolition, and the four thousand 
baths of the city were heated with those 
volumes, the fuel lasting six months, and were 
ever fires kindled at such fearful cost ? What 
holocausts of the world's literature ! What 
martyrdom of books ! How many of them 
have gone down under the rage of nations. 
Only one book has been able to withstand the 
bombardment and that has gone through with- 
out smell of fire on its lids. No sword or spear 
or musket for its defence. An unarmed New 
Testament. An unarmed Old Testament 
Yet invulnerable and triumphant. There 
must be something supernatural about it. 
Conqueror of books ! Monarch of books ! All 
the books of all the ages in all the libraries 
outshone by this one book which you and I 
can carry to church in a pocket. So methought 
amid the ashes of Alexandrian libraries. 

But all aboard the Egyptian rail train going 
up the banks of the Nile ! Look out of the 
window and see those camels kneeling for the 



Sailing up the Nile, 



63 



imposition of their load. And I think we 
might take from them a lesson, and instead 
of trying to stand upright in our own strength, 
become conscious of our weakness and need of 
divine help before we take upon us the heavy 
duties of the year or the week or the day, and 
so kneel for the burden. We meet processions 
of men and beasts on the way from their day's 
work, but alas for the homes to which the 
poor inhabitants are going ! For the most 
part hovels of mud. But there is something 
in the scene that thoroughly enlists us. It is 
the novelty of wretchedness and a scene of 
picturesque rags. For thousands of years this 
land has been under a very damnation of taxes. 
Nothing but Christian civilization will roll 
back the influences which are u spoiling the 
Egyptians." There are gardens and palaces, 
but they belong to the rulers. 

About here, under the valiant Murad Bey, 
the Mamelukes, who are the finest horsemen 
in all the world, came like a hurricane upon 



64 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

Napoleon's army, but they were beaten back 
by the French in one of the fiercest battles 
of all time. Then the Mamelukes turned 
their horses' heads the other way, and in des- 
peration backed them against the French 
troops, hoping the horses would kick the life 
out of the French regiments. The Mame- 
lukes failing again, plunged into this Nile 
and were drowned, the French for days fish- 
ing out the dead bodies of the Mamelukes 
to get the valuables upon their bodies. Na- 
poleon, at the daring of these Mamelukes, 
exclaimed, u Could I have united the Mame- 
luke horse to the French infantry, I should 
have reckoned myself master of the world." 

This ride along the Nile is one of the most 
solemn and impressive rides of all my lifetime, 
and our emotions deepen as the curtains of the 
night fall upon all surroundings. But we 
shall not be satisfied until we can take a ship 
and pass right out upon these wondrous waters 
and between the banks crowded with the story 
of empires. 



Sailing tip the Nile. 



65 



According to the lead pencil mark in my 
Bible it was Thanksgiving Day morning, No- 
vember 28th, 1889, that with my family and 
friends we stepped aboard the steamer on the 
Nile. The Mohammedan call to prayers had 
been sonnded by the priests of that religion, 
the Muezzins, from the four hundred mosques 
of Cairo, as the cry went out : 1 1 God is great. 
I bear witness that there is no God but God. 
I bear witness that Mohammed is the apostle 
of God. Come to prayers. Come to salvation. 
God is great. There is no other but God. 
Prayers are better than sleep. ' ' The sky and 
city and palm groves and river shipping were 
bathed in the light. It was not much of a 
craft that we boarded. It would not be hailed 
on any of our rivers with any rapture of ad- 
miration. It fortunately had but little speed, 
for twice we ran aground and the sailors 
jumped into the water and on their shoulders 
pushed her out. But what yacht of gayest 
sportsman, what deck of swiftest ocean queen 
5 



66 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

could give such thrill of rapture as a sail on 
the Nile ? The Pyramids in sight, the remains 
of cities that are now only a name, the vil- 
lages thronged with population. Both banks 
crowded with historical deeds of forty or sixty 
centuries. Oh, what a Book the Bible is when 
read on the Nile ! 

As we slowly move up the majestic river 
I see on each bank the wheels, the pumps, the 
buckets for irrigation, and see a man with his 
foot on the treadle of a wheel that fetches up 
the water for a garden, and then for the first 
time I understand that passage in Deuteron- 
omy which says of the Israelites after they had 
got back from Egypt : 4 ' The land whither 
thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land 
of Egypt from whence ye came out, where 
thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with 
thy foot. ' ' Then I understood how the land 
could be watered with the foot. How do 
you suppose I felt when on the deck of that 
steamer on the Nile I looked off upon the canals 



Sailing up the Nile. 



67 



and ditches and sluices through which the 
fields are irrigated by that river, and then read 
in Isaiah : ' 4 The burden of Egypt. The river 
shall be wasted and dried up, and they shall 
turn the rivers far away ; and the brooks of de- 
fence shall be emptied and dried up ; and they 
shall be broken in the purposes thereof, — all 
that make sluices and ponds for fish. ' 1 That 
Thanksgiving morning on the Nile I found 
my text of to-day. Pharaoh in this chapter is 
compared to the dragon or hippopotamus sug- 
gested by the crocodiles that used to line the 
banks of this river : ' 1 Thus saith the Lord 
God ; — Behold I am against thee, Pharaoh 
King of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in 
the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My 
river is mine own, and I have made it for 
myself. But I will put hooks in thy jaws, 
and I will cause the fish of thy rivers to stick 
unto thy scales, and I will bring thee up out 
of the midst of thy rivers, and all the fish of 
thy rivers shall stick unto thy scales, and the 



68 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

land of Egypt shall be desolate and waste ; 
and they shall know that I am the Lord : 
because he hath said the river is mine, and I 
have made it. M 

While sailing on this river or stopping at 
one of the villages, we see people on the 
banks who verify the Bible description, for 
they are now as they were in Bible times. 
Shoes are now taken off in reverence to sacred 
places. Children carried astride the mother's 
shoulder, as in Hagar's time. Women with pro- 
fusion of jewelry, as when Rebecca was affi- 
anced. Lentils shelled into the pottage, as when 
Esau sold his birthright to get such a dish. 
The same habits of salutation as when Joseph 
and his brethren fell on each other's necks. 
Courts of law held under big trees, as in 
olden times. People making bricks without 
straw, compelled by circumstances to use 
stubble instead of straw. Flying over or 
standing on the banks, as in Scripture days, 
are flamingoes, ospreys, eagles, pelicans, 



Sailing up the Nile. 



69 



herons, cuckoos and bullfinches. On all 
sides of this river sepulchres. Villages of 
sepulchres. Cities of sepulchres. Nations 
of sepulchres. And one is tempted to call it 
an empire of tombs. I never saw such a place 
as Egypt is for graves. And now we under- 
stand the complaining sarcasm of the Israelites 
when they were on the way from Egypt to Ca- 
naan : i 1 Because there were no graves in Egypt, 
hast thou taken us away to die in the wilder- 
ness ? n Down the river bank come the buf- 
falo and the cattle or kine to drink. And it 
was the ancestors of these cattle that inspired 
Pharaoh's dream of the lean kine and the fat 
kine. 

Here we disembark a little while for Mem- 
phis, off from the Nile to the right Memphis 
founded by the first king of Egypt and for a 
long while the capital. A city of marble and 
gold. Home of the Pharaohs. City nineteen 
miles in circumference. Vast colonnades 
through which imposing processions marched. 



70 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

Here stood the Temple of the Sun, itself in 
brilliancy a sun shone on by another sun. 
Thebes in power over a thousand one hundred 
years, or nearly ten times as long as 
the United States has existed. Here is a 
recumbent statue seventy-five feet long. 
Bronzed gateways. A necropolis called 1 ' the 
haven of the blest. M Here Joseph was prime 
minister. Here Pharaoh received Jacob. All 
possible splendors were built up into this 
royal city. Hosea, Ezekiel, Jeremiah and 
Isaiah speak of it as something wonderful. 
Never did I visit a city with such exalted an- 
ticipations and never did my anticipations 
drop so flat. Not a pillar stands. Not a wall 
is unbroken. Not a fountain tosses in the 
sun. Even the ruins have been ruined, and 
all that remain are chips of marble, small 
pieces of fractured sculpture and splintered 
human bones. Here and there a letter of some 
elaborate inscription, a toe or ear of a statue 
that once stood in niche of palace wall. Eze- 



Sailing up the Nile. 71 

J 

kiel prophesied its blotting-out, and the 
prophecy has been fulfilled. ' * Ride on, 5 ' I 
said to our party, u and don't wait for me." 
And as I stood there alone, the city of Mem- 
phis in the glory of past centuries returned. 
And I heard the rush of her chariots and the 
dash of her fountains and the conviviality of 
her palaces, and saw the drunken nobles roll 
on the floors of mosaic, while in startling con- 
trast, amid all the regalities of the place, I 
saw Pharaoh look up into the face of aged 
rustic Jacob, the shepherd, saying, 4 ' How 
old art thou?" 

But back to the Nile and on and up till you 
reach Thebes, in Scripture called the City of 
No. Hundred-gated Thebes. A quadrangu- 
lar city four miles from limit to limit. Four 
great temples, two of them Karnac and 
Luxor, once mountains of exquisite sculpture 
and gorgeous dreams solidified in stone. 
Statue of Rameses II, eight hundred and 
eighty-seven tons in weight and seventy-five 

1 

1 ' 



72 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

feet high, but now fallen and scattered. 
Walls abloom with the battlefields of cen- 
turies. The surrounding hills of rock hol- 
lowed into sepulchres on the wall of which 
are chiselled in picture and hieroglyphics the 
confirmation of Bible story in regard to the 
treatment of the Israelites in Egypt, so 
that, as explorations go on with the work, 
the walls of these sepulchres become com- 
mentaries of the Bible, the Scriptures origi- 
nally written upon parchment here cut into 
everlasting stone. Thebes mighty and domi- 
nant five hundred years. Then she went 
down in fulfilment of Ezekiel'S prophecy 
concerning the City of No, which was an- 
other name for Thebes : "I will execute judg- 
ment in No. I will cut off the multitudes of 
No." Jeremiah also prophesied, " Thus 
saith the Lord, I will punish the multitudes 
of No." This city of Thebes and all the 
other dead cities of Egypt iterate and reiter- 
ate the veracity of the Scriptures, telling the 



Sailing up the Nile. 



73 



same story which Moses and the prophets told. 
Have you noticed how God kept back these 
archaeological confirmations of the Bible until 
our time, when the air is full of unbelief 
about the truthfulness of the dear old Book? 

He waited until the printing press had been 
set up in its perfected shape, and the subma- 
rine cable was laid, and the whole world was 
intelligent enough to appreciate the testimony, 
and then he resurrected the dead cities of the 
earth, and commands them, saying, " Open 
your long sealed lips and speak ! Memphis 
and Thebes ! Is the Bible true ? " " True ! 1 ' 
respond Memphis and Thebes. 1 1 Babylon ! 
Is the Book of Daniel true ? " True ! re- 
sponds Babylon. ' 4 Ruins of Palestine and 
Syria! Is the New Testament true?" 
" True ! " respond the ruins all the way from 
Joppa to the Dead Sea, and from Jerusalem 
to Damascus. What a mercy that this testi- 
mony of the dead cities should come at a time 
when the Bible is especially assailed. And 



74 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

this work will go on until the veracity and di- 
vinity of the Scriptures will be as certain to 
all sensible men and women as that two and 
two make four, as that an isosceles triangle is 
one which has two of its sides equal, as that 
the diameter of a circle is a line drawn 
through the centre and terminated by the cir- 
cumference, as certain as any mathematical 
demonstration. Never did I feel more en- 
couraged than when after preaching a sermon 
on evidences of the truth of the Bible drawn 
from Oriental lands, a distinguished senator 
of the United States, known and honored 
everywhere, but now deceased, came up to the 
platform and said : "I was brought up in the 
faith of Christianity, but I got speculating on 
all these subjects, and had given up my faith 
in the Bible, but those facts and arguments 
archaeological take me back to my old faith in 
the Bible, which my father and mother taught 
me," The tears rolling down his cheeks 
evinced the depth of his emotion. When I 



Sailing up the Nile. 



75 



read of the senator's death I was comforted to 
think that perhaps I may have helped him a 
little in the struggle of his life, and perhaps 
given him an easier pillow on which to die. 

Two great nations, Egypt and Greece, dip- 
lomatized and almost came to battle for one 
book, a copy of iEjschylus. Ptolemy, the 
Egyptian king, discovered that in the great 
library at Alexandria there was no copy of 
iEschylus. The Egyptian king sent up to 
Athens, Greece, to borrow the book and make 
a copy of it. Athens demanded a deposit of 
seventeen thousand seven hundred dollars as 
security. The Egyptian king received the 
book, but refused to return that which he had 
borrowed, and so forfeited the seventeen thou- 
sand seven hundred dollars. The two nations 
rose in contention concerning that one book. 
Beautiful and mighty book indeed ! But it 
is a book of horrors, the dominant idea that 
we are the victims of hereditary influences 
from which there is no escape, and that Pate 



76 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis, 

rules the world ; and although the author does 
tell of Prometheus who was crucified on the 
rocks for sympathy for mankind, a powerful 
suggestion of the sacrifice of Christ in later 
years, it is a very poor book compared with 
that Book which we hug to our hearts 
because it contains our only guide in life, our 
only comfort in death, and our only hope for 
a blissful immortality. If two nations could 
afford to struggle for one copy of ^Eschylus, 
how much more can all nations afford to 
struggle for the possession and triumph of the 
Holy Scriptures ! 

But the dead cities strung along the Nile 
not only demolish infidelity, but thunder 
down the absurdity of the modern doctrine 
of evolution, which says the world started with 
nothing and then rose, and human nature be- 
gan with nothing but evolved into splendid 
manhood and womanhood of itself. Nay ; 
the sculpture of the world was more wonder- 
ful in the days of Memphis and Thebes and 



Sailing up the Nile. 



77 



Carthage than in the days of Boston and New 
York. Those blocks of stone weighing three 
hundred tons high up in the wall at Karnac 
imply machinery equal to, if not surpassing, 
the machinery of the nineteenth century. 
How was that statue of Rameses, weighing 
eight hundred and eighty-seven tons, trans- 
ported from the quarries two hundred miles 
away, and how was it lifted ? Tell us, modern 
machinists. How were those galleries of 
rock, still standing at Thebes, filled with 
paintings surpassed by no artist's pencil of the 
present day ? Tell us, artists of the nine- 
teenth century. The dead cities of Egypt so 
far as they have left enough pillars or statues 
or sepulchres or temple ruins to tell the story — 
Memphis, Migdol, Hierapolis, Zoan, Thebes, 
Goshen, Carthage — all of them developing 
downward instead of upward. They have 
evoluted from magnificence into destruction. 
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the elevator of 
individual and social national character. I^et 



78 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

all the living cities know that pomp and opu- 
lence and temporal prosperity are no security. 
Those ancient cities lacked nothing but good 
morals. Dissipation and sin slew them, and 
unless dissipation and sin are halted, they will 
some day slay our modern cities, and leave 
our palaces of merchandise and our galleries 
of art and our city halls as flat in the dust as 
we found Memphis on the afternoon of that 
Thanksgiving Day. And if the cities go 
down, the nation will go down. u Oh," you 
say, 1 4 that is impossible ; we have stood so 
long — yea, over a hundred years as a nation. ' ) 
Why, what of that ? Thebes stood five hun- 
dred years ; Memphis stood a thousand years. 
God does not forget. One day with the Lord 
is as a thousand years and a thousand years 
as one day. Rum and debauchery and bad 
politics are more rapidly working the destruc- 
tion of our American cities than sin of any 
kind and all kinds worked for the destruction 
of the cities of Africa, once so mighty and 



Sailing up the Nile. 



79 



now so prostrate. But their gods were idols, 
and could do nothing except for debasement. 
Our God made the heavens and sent His Son 
to redeem the nations. And our cities will 
not go down, and our nation will not perish 
because the Gospel is going to triumph. For- 
ward ! all schools and colleges and churches ! 
Forward ! all reformatory and missionary or- 
ganizations. Forward ! all the influences 
marshalled to bless the world. Let our mod- 
ern European and American cities listen to 
the voice of those ancient cities resurrected, 
and by hammer and chisel and crow-bar com- 
pelled to speak. 

I notice the voice of those ancient cities 
is hoarse from the exposure of forty 
centuries, and they accentuate slowly with 
lips that were palsied for ages, but altogether 
those cities along the Nile intone these words: 
" Hear us, for we are very old, and it is hard 
for us to speak. We were wise long before 
Athens learned her first lesson. We sailed 



So From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

our ships while yet navigation was unborn. 
We sinned and we fell. Our learning could 
not save us : see those half-obliterated hiero- 
glyphics on yonder wall. Our architecture 
could not save us : see the painted columns 
of Philae. Our heroes could not save us : 
witness this, Menes, Diodorus, Rameses and 
Ptolemv. Our orods Amnion and Osiris could 

J o 

not save us : see their fallen temples all along 
the four thousand miles of Nile. O, ye 
modern cities, get some other God — a God 
who can help, a God who can pardon, a God 
w T ho can save. Called up as we are for a lit- 
tle while to give testimony, again the sands 
of the desert will bury us. Ashes to ashes, 
dust to dust ! 1 ' And as these voices of por- 
phyry and granite ceased, all the sarcophagi 
under the hills responded, 11 Ashes to ashes ! " 
and the capital of a lofty column fell grind- 
ing itself to powder among the rocks, and re- 
sponding, 1 ' Dust to dust ! ' 1 



iSttcfts Without £trato. 



44 The Burden of Egypt." — Isaiah xix. i. 



HAT is all this excitement about in the 
streets of Cairo, Egypt, this December 
morning in 1889? Stand back! We hear 
loud voices and see the crowds of people re- 
treating to the sides of the street. The ex- 
citement of others becomes our own excite- 
ment. Footmen come in sight. They have 
a rod in hand and tasselled cap on head, and 
their arms and feet are bare. Their garb is 
black to the waist, except as threaded with 
gold, and the rest is white. They are clearing 
the way for an official dignitary in a chariot 
or carriage. They are swift and sometimes 
run thirty or forty miles at a stretch in front 
of an equipage. Make way ! They are the 
fleetest-footed men on earth, but soon die, for 
6 (81) 




82 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

the human frame was not made for such en- 
durance. I asked all around me who the man 
in the carriage was, but no one seemed to 
know. Yet as I fell back with the rest to the 
wall I said, this is the old custom found all 
up and down the Bible, footmen running be- 
fore the rulers, demanding obeisance, as in 
Genesis before Joseph's chariot the people 
were commanded, " Bow the knee ; n and as I 
saw the swift feet of the men followed by the 
swift feet of the horses, how those old words 
of Jeremiah rushed through my mind : " If 
thou hast run with the footmen and they have 
wearied thee, how canst thou contend with 
horses ?' 1 

Now, my hearers, in this course of sermons 
I am only serving you as footman, and clear- 
ing the way for your coming into the wonders 
of Egyptology, a subject that I would have 
you study far beyond anything that can be 
said in the brevity of pulpit utterance. Two 
hundred and eighty -nine times does the Bible 



Bricks Without Straw, 



83 



refer to Egypt and the Egyptians. No won- 
der, for Egypt was the mother of nations. 
Egypt, the mother of Greece; Greece, the 
mother of Rome ; Rome, the mother of Eng- 
land; England, the mother of our own land. 
According to that Egypt is our great-great 
grandmother. On other Sabbaths I left you 
studying what they must have been in their 
glory : the Hypostyle Hall of Karnac, the 
architectural miracles at Luxor, the Colonnade 
of Horemheb, the cemeteries of Memphis, the 
value of a kingdom in one monument, the 
Sphinx, which with lips of stone speaks loud 
enough to be heard across the centuries; Helio- 
polis and Zoan, the conundrum of archaeolo- 
gists. But all that extravagance of palace and 
temple and monument was the cause of an 
oppression high as heaven and deep as hell. 
The weight of those blocks of stone, heavier 
than any modern machinery could lift, came 
down upon the Hebrew slaves, and their blood 
mixed the mortar for the trowels. 



84 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis, 

We saw again and again on and along the 
Nile a boss workman roughly smite a subor- 
dinate who did not please him. It is no rare 
occurrence to see long lines of men under 
heavy burdens passing by taskmasters at short 
distances, lashing them as they go by into 
greater speed, and then these workmen, ex- 
hausted by the blasting heats of the day, lying 
down upon the bare ground, suddenly chilled 
with the night air, crying out in prayer, u Ya! 
Allah!" 11 Ya! Allah!" which means Oh! God! 
Oh ! God ! But what must have been the olden 
times cruelty shown by the Egyptians towards 
their Israelitish slaves is indicated by a picture 
in the Beni-Hassan tombs, where a man is held 
down on his face by two men, and another 
holds up the victim's feet, while the officials 
beat the bare back of the victim, every stroke, 
I have no doubt, fetching the blood. 

Xow you see how the Pharaohs could afford 
to build such costly works. It cost them 
nothing for wages, nothing but the tears and 



Bricks Without Straw '. 



blood of the toilers, and tears and blood are a 
cheap drink for devils. u Bricks without 
straw ' ' may not suggest so much hardship 
until you know that the bricks were usually 
made with ' ' crushed straw, ' ' straw crushed by 
the feet of the oxen in the threshing, and, this 
crushed straw denied to the workmen, they 
had to pick up here and there a piece of stub- 
ble or gather rushes from the water-side. This 
story of the Bible is confirmed by the fact that 
many of the brick walls of Egypt have on 
the lower layer bricks made with straw r , but 
the higher layers of brick made out of rough 
straw, or rushes from the river bank, the truth 
of the book of Exodus thus written in the 
brick walls discovered by the modern ex- 
plorers. 

That governmental outrage has always been 
a characteristic of Egyptian rulers. Taxation 
to the point of starvation was the Egyptian 
rule in the Bible times as well as it is in our 
own time. A modern traveller gives the fig- 



86 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

ures concerning the cultivation of seventeen 
acres, the value of the yield of the field stated 



in piasters : 

Produce, . . . 1802 

Expenses, . . . 993/4. 

Clear produce, . . . 808 }4 

Taxes, . . . 493 

Amount cleared by the farmer, 3^5)4 



Or, as my authority declares, seventy per cent, 
of what the Egyptian farmer makes is paid for 
taxes to the government. Now, that is not 
so much taxation as assassination. What 
think you of that, you who groan under heavy 
taxes in America ? I have heard that in Egypt 
the working people have a song like this : 
" They starve us, they starve us, they beat us, 
they beat us, but there's some one above, 
there's some one above, who will punish them 
well, who will punish them well." But 
seventy per cent, of government tax in Egypt 
is a mercy as compared to what the Hebrew 



Bricks Without Straw. 



37 



slaves suffered there in Bible times. They got 
nothing but food hardly fit for a dog, and their 
clothing was of one rag, and their roof a burn- 
ing sky by day and the stars of heaven by 
night You say, " Why did they stand it ?" 
Because they had to stand it. You see along 
back in the world's twilight there was a fam- 
ine in Canaan, and old Jacob and his sons 
came to Egypt for bread. The old man's boy 
Joseph was prime minister, and Joseph — I 
suppose the father and the brothers called him 
Joe, for it does not make any difference how 
much a boy is advanced in worldly success, 
his father and brothers and sisters always call 
him by the same name that he was called 
by when two years old — Joseph, by Pharaoh's 
permission gave to his family, who had just 
arrived, the richest part of Egypt, the West- 
chester farms or the Lancaster farms of the 
ancients. Jacob's descendants rapidly multi- 
plied. After a while Egypt took a turn at 
famine, and those descendants of Jacob, the 



88 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

Israelites, came to a great storehouse which 
Joseph had provided, and paid in money for 
corn. But after a while the money gave out 
and then they paid in cattle. After a while 
the cattle were all in possession of the gov- 
ernment, and then the Hebrews bought corn 
from the government by surrendering them- 
selves as slaves. 

Then began slavery in Egypt. The gov- 
ernment owned all the Hebrews. And let 
modern lunatics, who in America propose 
handing over telegraph companies and rail- 
roads and other things to be run by the gov- 
ernment see the folly of letting government 
get its hand on everything. I would rather 
trust the people than any government the 
United States ever had or will have. Woe 
worth the day when legislators and congresses 
and administrations get possession of anything 
more than it is necessary for them to have. 
That would be the revival in this land of that 
old Egyptian tyranny for which God has never 



Bricks Without Straw. 89 

had anything but red-hot thunderbolts. But 
through such unwise processes Israel was en- 
slaved in Egypt, and the long line of agonies 
began all up and down the Nile. Heavier and 
sharper fell the lash, hungrier and ghastlier 
grew the workmen, louder and longer went 
up the prayer, until three millions of the en- 
slaved were crying, " Ya! Allah! Ya! Allah !" 
Oh! God! Oh! God! 

Where was help to come from? Not the 
throne, Pharaoh sat upon that. Not the 
army, Pharaoh's officers commanded that. 
Not surrounding nations, Pharaoh's threat 
made them all tremble. Not the gods, Am- 
nion and Osiris, or the goddess Isis, for Pha- 
raoh built their temples out of the groans of 
this diabolical servitude. But one hot day 
the princess Thonoris, the daughter of Pha- 
raoh, while in her bathing-house on the banks 
of the Nile, has word brought her that there 
is a baby afloat on the river in a cradle made 
out of big leaves. Of course there is excite- 



90 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

ment all up and down the banks, for an or- 
dinary baby in an ordinary cradle attracts 
smiling attention, but an infant in a cradle 
of papyrus rocking on the river arouses not 
only admiration but curiosity. Who made 
that boat ? Who made it water-tight with bit- 
umen ? Who launched it ? Reckless of the 
crocodiles which lay basking themselves in the 
sun, the maidens wade in and snatch up the 
child, and first one carries him and then 
another carries him, and all the way up the 
bank he runs a gauntlet of caresses, till Thon- 
oris rushes out of the bathing-house and says, 
4 i Beautiful foundling, I will adopt you as my 
own. You shall yet wear the Egyptian crown 
and sit on the Egyptian throne." No! No! 
No! He is to be the emancipator of the He- 
brews. Tell it in all the brick kilns. Tell it 
among all those who are writhing under the 
lash, tell it among all the castles of Memphis 
and Heliopolis and Zoan and Thebes. Before 
him a sea will part. On a mountain top 5 



Bricks Without Straw. 



91 



alone, this one will receive from the Almighty 
a law that is to be the foundation of all good 
law while the world lasts. When he is dead 
God will come down on Nebo and alone bury 
him, 110 man or woman or angel worthy to at- 
tend the obsequies. The child grows up and 
goes out and studies the horrors of Egyptian 
oppression, and suppresses his indignation for 
the right time has not come, although once 
for a minute he let fly and when he saw a 
taskmaster put the whip on the back of a 
workman who was doing his best and heard 
the poor fellow cry and saw the blood spurt, 
Moses doubled up his fist and struck him on 
the temple till the cruel villain rolled over ia 
the sand exanimate and never swung the lash 
again. Served him right! 

But, Moses, are you going to undertake the 
impossibilities? You feel that you are going 
to free the Hebrews from bondage, but where 
is your army? Where is your navy? Not a 
sword have 3/011, not a spear, not a chariot, not 



92 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

a horse. Ah! God was on his side and he has 
an army of his own. The snow-storms are on 
God's side: witness the snow banks in which 
the French army of invasion were buried on 
their way back from Moscow. The rain is on 
his side: witness the 18th of June at Waterloo 
when the tempests so saturated the road that 
the attack could not be made on Wellington's 
forces until eleven o'clock and he was strong 
enough to hold out until reinforcements ar- 
rived. Had that battle been opened at five 
o'clock in the morning instead of at eleven 
the destiny of Europe would have been turned 
the wrong way. The heavy rain decided 
everything. So also are the winds and the 
waves on God's side: witness the Armada, 
with one hundred and fifty ships and twenty- 
six hundred and fifty guns and eight thousand 
sailors and twenty thousand soldiers, sent out 
by Philip II of Spain to conquer England. 
What became of men and shipping ? Ask the 
wind and the waves all along the English and 



Bricks Without Straw. 



93 



Irish coasts, The men and the ships all 
wrecked or drowned or scattered. So I ex- 
pect that Moses will be helped in rescuing 
the Israelites by a special weaponry. 

To the Egyptians the Nile was a deity. Its 
waters were very delicious. It was the finest 
natural beverage of all the earth. We have 
no such love for the Hudson, and Germans 
have no such love for the Rhine, and Rus- 
sians have no such love for the Volga, as the 
Egyptians have love for the Nile. But one 
day when Pharaoh comes down to this river 
Moses takes a stick and whips the waters and 
they turn into the gore of a slaughter-house, 
and through the sluices and fish-ponds the in- 
carnadined liquid backs up into the land and 
the malodor whelms everything from mud 
hovel to throne-room. Then came the frogs 
with horrible croak all over everything. Then 
this people, cleanly almost to fastidiousness, 
were infested with insects that belong to the 
filthy and unkempt, and the air buzzed and 



94 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 



buzzed with flies, and then the distemper 
started cows to bellowing and horses to neigh- 
ing and camels to groaning, as they rolled 
over and expired. And then boils, one of 
which will put a man in wretchedness, came 
in clusters from the top of the head to the 
sole of the foot. And then the clouds dropped 
hail and lightning. And then locusts came 
in, swarms of them, worse than the grass- 
hoppers ever were in Kansas, and then dark- 
ness dropped for three days so that the people 
could not see their hand before their face, 
great surges of midnight covering them. And, 
last of all, on the night of the 18th of April, 
about eighteen hundred years before Christ, 
the Destroying Angel sweeps past; and hear 
it all night long, the flap! flap! flap! of his 
awful wings, until Egypt rolled on, a great 
hearse, the eldest child dead in every Egyp- 
tian home. The eldest son of Pharaoh ex- 
pired that night in the palace, and all along 
the streets of Memphis and Heliopolis and all 



Bricks Without Straw, 



95 



up and down the Nile there was a funeral 
wail that would have rent the fold of the un- 
natural darkness if it had not been impene- 
trable. 

The Israelitish homes, however, were un- 
touched. But these homes were full of pre- 
paration, for now is your chance, O ye wronged 
Hebrew's! Snatch up what pieces of food you 
can and to the desert! Its simoons are better 
than the bondage you have suffered. Its 
scorpions will not sting so sharply as the 
wrongs that have stung you all your lives. 
Away! The man who was cradled in the 
basket of papyrus on the Nile will lead you. 
Up! Up! This is the night of your rescue. 
They gather together at a signal. Alexander's 
armies and all the armies of olden time were led 
by torches on high poles, great crests of fire; 
and the Lord Almighty kindles a torch not 
held by human hands but by omnipotent hand. 
Not made out of straw or oil but kindled out of 
the atmosphere, such a torch as the world 



$6 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

never saw before and never will see again. It 
reached from the earth unto the heaven, a 
pillar of fire, that pillar practically saying, 
"This way! March this way ! On that 
supernatural flambeau more than a million 
refugees set their eyes. Moses and Aaron 
lead on. Then come the families of Israel. 
Then come the herds and flocks moving on 
across the sands to what is the beach of waters 
now called Bahr-el-Kulzum, but called in the 
Bible the Red Sea. And when I dipped my 
hands in its blue waters, the heroics of the 
Mosaic passage rolled over me. 

After three days' march the Israelitish refu- 
gees encamped for the night on the bank of 
the Red Sea. As the shadows begin to fall, 
in the distance is seen the host of Pharaoh in 
pursuit. There were six hundred finest w r ar 
chariots followed by common chariots rolling 
at full speed. And the rumbling of the wheels 
and the curse of infuriated Egyptians came 
down with the darkness. But the Lord opened 



Bricks Without Straw. 



97 



the crystal gates of Bahr-el-Kulzum and the 
enslaved Israelites passed into liberty, and 
then the crystal gates of the sea rolled shut 
against the Egyptian pursuers. It was about two 
o'clock in the morning when the interlocked 
axle-trees of the Egyptian chariots could not 
move an inch either way. But the Red Sea 
unhitched the horses, and unhelmeted the 
warriors, and left the proud host a wreck on 
the Arabian sands. Then two choruses arose, 
and Moses led the men in the one and Miriam 
led the women in the other, and the women 
beat time with their feet. The record says : 
' 1 All the women went out after her with 
timbrels and with dances. And Miriam an- 
swered them, Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath 
triumphed gloriously ; the horse and his rider 
hath he thrown into the sea. ' ' What a thrill- 
ing story of endurance and victory ! The 
greatest triumph of Handel's genius was shown 
in his immortal dramatic oratorio, 4 1 Israel in 
Egypt. ' ' He had given to the world the ora- 
7 



98 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis, 



torio of " Esther and Deborah, " and u Atha- 
liah, ' ? but resented for his mightiest exertion 
at the full height of his powers the marshalling 
of all musical instruments to the description 
in harmony of the scenes on which we this 
morning dwell. He gave twenty-seven days 
to this production, with its twenty-eight 
choruses, enthralling his own time and all 
after-time with his 1 1 Israel in Egypt. ' 1 

So the burden of oppression was lifted, but 
another burden of Egypt is made up of deserts. 
Indeed, Africa is a great continent for deserts 
— Libyan desert, Sahara desert, deserts here 
and there, and yonder, condemning vast re- 
gions of Africa to barrenness, one of the deserts 
three thousand miles long and a thousand 
miles wide. But all those deserts will yet be 
flooded, and so made fertile. De Lesseps says 
it can be done, and he who planned the Suez 
Canal, which marries the Red Sea and the 
Mediterranean, knows what he is talking about. 
The human race is so multiplied that it must 



Bricks Without Straw, 



99 



have more cultivated land, and the world must 
abolish its deserts. Eight hundred million of 
the human race are now living on lands not 
blest with rains but dependent on irrigation, 
and we want by irrigation to make room for 
eight hundred million more. By irrigation 
the prophecy will be fulfilled, and " the desert 
will blossom as the rose. ' ' So from Egypt the 
burden of sand will be lifted. 

Another burden of Egypt to be lifted is 
the burden of Mohammedanism, although 
there are some good things about that religion. 
Its disciples must always wash before they 
pray, and that is five times a day. A com- 
mendable grace is cleanliness. Strong drink 
is positively forbidden by Mohammedans, and 
though some may have seen a drunken Mo- 
hammedan, I never saw one. It is a religion 
of sobriety. Then they are not ashamed of 
their devotions. When the call for prayers is 
sounded from the minarets the Mohammedan 
immediately unrolls the rug on the ground 



ioo From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

and falls on his knees, and crowds of specta- 
tors are to him no embarrassment — reproof to 
many a Christian who omits his prayers if peo- 
ple are looking. But Mohammedanism, with 
its polygamy, blights everything it touches. 
Mohammed, its founder, had four wives, 
and his followers are the enemies of good 
womanhood. Mohammedanism puts its curse 
on all Egypt, and by setting up a sinful Arab 
higher than the immaculate Christ, is an over- 
whelming blasphemy. May God help the 
brave and consecrated missionaries who are 
spending their lives in combating it. 

But before I forget it I must put more 
emphasis upon the fact that the last outrage 
that resulted in the liberation of the Hebrews 
was their being compelled to make bricks 
without straw. That was the last straw that 
broke the camel's back. God would allow the 
despotism against His people to go no further. 
Making bricks without straw ! 

That oppression still goes on. Demand of 



Bricks Without Straw. 101 



your wife appropriate wardrobe and bountiful 
table without providing the means necessary: 
bricks without straw. Cities demanding in the 
public school faithful and successful instruc- 
tion without giving the teachers competent 
livelihood : bricks without straw. United 
States Government demanding of senators and 
congressmen at Washington full attendance 
to the interests of the people, but on compen- 
sation which may have done well enough when 
twenty-five cents went as far as a dollar now, 
but in these times is not sufficient to preserve 
their influence and respectability : bricks 
without straw. In many parts of the land 
churches demanding of pastors vigorous ser- 
mons and sympathetic service on starva- 
tion salary, sanctified Ciceros on four hundred 
dollars a year : bricks without straw. That 
is one reason why there are so many poor 
bricks. In all departments, bricks not even, 
or bricks that crumble, or bricks that are not 
bricks at all. Work adequately paid for is 



102 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

worth more than work not paid for. More 
straw and then better bricks. 

But in all departments there are Pharaohs : 
sometimes Capital a Pharaoh, and sometimes 
Labor a Pharaoh. When Capital prospers, 
and makes large percentage on its investment, 
and declines to consider the needs of the 
operatives, and treats them as so many human 
machines, their nerves no more than the bands 
on the factory wheel — then Capital is a Phar- 
aoh. On the other hand, when workmen, not 
regarding the anxieties and business struggles 
of the firm employing them, and at a time 
when the firm are doing their best to meet an 
important contract and need all hands busy to 
accomplish it, at such a time to have the em- 
ployees make a strike and put their employers 
into extreme perplexity and severe loss — then 
Labor becomes a Pharaoh of the worst oppres- 
sion, and must look out for the judgments of 
God. 

When, in December of 1889, at the Mu- 



Bricks Without Straw. 103 



seum at Boulac, Egypt, I looked at the mum- 
mies of the old Pharaohs, the very miscreants 
who diabolized centuries, and I saw their teeth 
and hair and finger nails and the flesh drawn 
tight over their cheek bones, the sarcophagi 
of these dead monarchs side by side, and I 
was so fascinated I could only with difficulty 
get away from the spot, I was not looking 
upon the last of the Pharaohs. Pharaoh 
thought he did a fine thing, a cunning thing, 
a decisive thing, when for the complete ex- 
tinction of the Hebrews in Egypt he ordered 
all the Hebrew boys massacred, but he did not 
find it so fine a thing when his own first-born 
that night of the destroying angel dropped 
dead on the mosaic floor at the foot of the 
porphyry pillar of the palace. L,et all the 
Pharaohs take warning. Some of the worst 
of them are on a small scale in households, 
as when a man, because his arm is strong and 
his voice loud, dominates his poor wife into a 
domestic slavery. There are thousands of 



104 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

such cases, where the wife is a lifetime serf, 
her opinion disregarded, her tastes insulted, 
and her existence a wretchedness, though the 
world may not know it. It is a Pharaoh that 
sits at the head of that table, and a Pharaoh 
that tyannizes that home. There is no more 
abhorrent Pharaoh than a domestic Pharaoh. 
There are thousands of women to whom 
death is passage from Egypt to Canaan, be- 
cause they get rid of a cruel taskmaster. 
What an accursed monster is that man who 
keeps his wife in dread about family expenses, 
and must be cautious how she introduces an 
article of millinery or womanly wardrobe 
without humiliating consultation and apology. 
Who is that man acting so ? For six months, 
in order to win that woman's heart he sent her 
every few days a bouquet wound with white 
ribbon, and an endearing couplet, and took her 
to concerts and theatres, and helped her into 
carriages as though she were a princess, and 
ran across the room to pick up her pocket- 



Bricks Without Straw. 



handkerchief with the speed of an antelope, 
and on the marriage-day promised all that the 
liturgy required, saying, " I will! " with an 
emphasis that excited the admiration of all 
spectators. But now he begrudges her two 
cents for a postage stamp, and wonders why 
she rides across Brooklyn Bridge when the 
foot-passage costs nothing. He thinks now 
she is awful plain, and he acts like the devil, 
while he thunders out, 4 1 Where did you get 
that new hat from ? That's where my money 
goes. Where's my breakfast? Do you call 
that coffee ? What are you whimpering about ? 
Hurry up now and get my slippers ! Where's 
the newspaper ? ' ' The tone, the look, the im- 
patience, the cruelty of a Pharaoh. That is 
what gives so many women a cowed-down 
look. Pharaoh ! you had better take your 
iron heel off that woman's neck, or God will 
help you remove your heel. She says nothing. 
For the sake of avoiding a scandal she keeps 
silent ; but her tears and wrongs have gone 



106 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

into a record that you will have to meet as cer- 
tainly as Pharaoh had to meet hail, and light- 
ning, and darkness, and the death angel. God 
never yet gave to any man the right to tyran- 
nize over a woman, and what a sneak you are 
to take advantage of the marriage-vow, and 
because she cannot help herself and under the 
shelter of your own home to out- Pharaoh the 
Egyptian oppressor. There is something 
awfully wrong in a household where the 
woman is not considered of as much import- 
ance as the man. No room in this world for 
any more Pharaohs ! 

But it rolls over on me with great power 
the thought that we have all been slaves down 
in Egypt, and sin has been our taskmaster, 
and again and again we have felt its lash. 
But Christ has been our Moses to lead us out 
of bondage, and we are forever free. The 
Red Sea of a Saviour's sacrifice rolls deep and 
wide between us and our aforetime bondage, 
and though there may be deserts yet for us to 



Bricks Without Straw, 107 

cross we are on the way to the Promised Land. 
Thanks be unto God for this emancipating 
Gospel! Come up out of Egypt all ye who 
are yet enslaved. What Christ did for us he 
will do for you. " Exodus! " is the word. 
Exodus! Instead of the brick-kilns of Egypt 
come into the empurpled vineyards of God, 
where one cluster of grapes is bigger than the 
one that the spies brought to the Israelites by 
the brook Eshcol, though that cluster was so 
large that it was borne 1 c between two upon a 
staff." 



i^talta anb Xo iltttlr itmbness. 



** The barbarous people showed us no little kind- 
ness." — Actsxxviii. 2. 



T^ERE we are on the Island of Malta, an- 
other name for Melita, The island, 
which has always been an important commer- 
cial centre, belonging at different times to 
Phoenicia, to Greece, to Rome, to Arabia, to 
Spain, to France, now belongs to England. 
The area of the island is about one hundred 
square miles. It is in the Mediterranean Sea, 
and of such clarity of atmosphere that Mt 
Etna, one hundred and thirty miles away, can 
be distinctly seen. The island is gloriously 
memorable, because the Knights of Malta for 
a long time ruled there, but most famous be- 
cause of the apostolic shipwreck. The be- 
stormed vessel on which Paul sailed had 1 1 laid 
(108) 



Malta a?id No Little Kindness. 109 

to n on the starboard tack, and the wind was 
blowing east-northeast, and the vessel, drift- 
ing probably a mile and a half an hour, she 
struck at what is now called St. PauPs Bay. 
Practical sailors have taken up the Bible ac- 
count and decided beyond controversy the 
place of the shipwreck. But the island which 
has so rough a coast is for the most part a gar- 
den. Richest fruits and a profusion of honey 
characterized it in PauPs time as well as now. 
The finest oranges, figs and olives grow there. 

When Paul and his comrades crawled up 
on the beach, saturated, and hungry from 
long abstinence from food, and chilled to the 
bone, the islanders, though called barbarians, 
because they could not speak Greek, opened 
their doors to the shipwrecked unfortunates. 
Everything had gone to the bottom of the 
deep, and the barefooted, bareheaded apostle 
and ship's crew were in a condition to appre- 
ciate hospitality. About twenty-five such 
men a few seasons ago I found in the life sta- 



no From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

tion near Easthampton, Long Island. They 
had got ashore in the night from the sea, and 
not a hat or a shoe had they left. They found 
out, as Paul and his fellow voyagers found 
out, that the sea is the roughest of all robbers. 
My text finds the ship's crew ashore on Malta, 
and around a hot fire drying themselves, and 
with the best provision the islanders can 
offer them. And they go into government 
quarters for three days to recuperate, Publius, 
the ruler, inviting them, although he had se- 
vere sickness in the house at that time, his 
father down with dysentery and typhoid fever. 
Yea, for three months they stayed on the is- 
land watching for a ship, and putting the hos- 
pitalities of the islanders to a severe test But 
it endured the test satisfactorily, and it is re- 
corded for all the ages of time and eternity to 
read and hear in regard to the inhabitants of 
Malta, u The barbarous people showed us no 
little kindness." 

Kindness ! What a great word that is. It 



Malta and No Little Kindness. hi 

would take a reed as long as that which the 
Apocalyptic angel used to measure heaven to 
tell the length, the breadth, the height of that 
munificent word. It is a favorite Bible word 
and it is early launched in the book of Gene- 
sis, caught up in the book of Joshua, em- 
braced in the book of Ruth, sworn by in the 
book of Samuel, crowned in the book of 
Psalms, and enthroned in many places in the 
New Testament. Kindness ! A word no 
more gentle than mighty. I expect it will 
wrestle me down before I get through with it. 
It is strong enough to throw an archangel. 
But it will be well for us to stand around it, 
and warm ourselves by its glow, as Paul and 
his fellow voyagers stood around the fire on 
the Island of Malta, where the Maltese made 
themselves immortal in my text by the way 
they treated these victims of the sea. ( ( The 
barbarous people showed us no little kind- 
ness. ' ' 

Kindness! All definitions of that multi- 



H2 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis, 

potent word break down half way. You say 
it is clemency, benignity, generosity; it is 
made up of good wishes, it is an expression of 
beneficence, it is a contribution to the hap- 
piness of others. Some one else says: " Why, 
I can give you a definition of kindness : it is 
sunshine of the soul. It is affection peren- 
nial, it is a climacteric grace, it is the combi- 
nation of all graces. It is compassion. It is 
the perfection of gentle manliness and woman- 
liness. " Are you all through? You have 
made a dead failure in your definition. It 
cannot be defined. But we all know what it 
it, for we all have felt its power. Some of 
you may have felt it as Paul felt it, on some 
coast of rock as the ship went to pieces, but 
more of us have again and again in some awful 
stress of life had either from earth or heaven 
hands stretched out which 11 showed us no 
little kindness. 1 1 

There is kindness of disposition, kindness 
of word, kindness of act, and there is Jesus 



Malta and No Little Kindness. 113 

Christ the impersonation of all of them. Kind- 
ness ! You cannot affect it, you cannot play 
it as a part, you cannot enact it, you cannot 
dramatize it. By the grace of God you must 
have it inside you, an everlasting summer, or 
rather a combination of June and October, the 
geniality of the one and the tonic of the other. 
It cannot dwell with arrogance or spite or re- 
venge or malevolence. At its first appearance 
in the soul all these Amalekites and Gergash- 
ites and Hittites and Jebusites must quit, and 
quit forever. Kindness wishes everybody well> 
every man well, every woman well, every child 
well, every bird well, every horse well, every 
dog well, every cat well. Give this spirit full 
swing and you would have no more need of 
societies for the prevention of cruelty to ani- 
mals, no more need of protective sewing 
women's association, and it would dull every 
sword until it would not cut skin deep, and 
unwheel every battery till it could not roll, 

and make gunpowder of no more use in the 

8 



H4 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

world except for rock blasting or pyrotechnic 
celebration. Kindness is a spirit divinely im- 
planted, and in answer to prayer, and then to 
be sedulously cultivated until it fills all the 
nature with a perfume richer and more pun- 
gent than mignonette, and, as if you put a 
tuft of that aromatic beauty behind the clock 
on the mantel, or in some corner where nobody 
can see it, you find people walking about your 
room looking this way and that, and you ask 
them, * 1 What are you looking for ? " and they 
answer, " Where is that flower? M — so if one 
has in his soul this infinite sweetness of dis- 
position, its perfume will whelm everything. 

But are you waiting and hoping for some 
one to be bankrupted, or exposed, or discom- 
fited, or in some way overthrown, then kind- 
ness has not taken possession of your nature. 
You are wrecked on a Malta where there are 
no oranges. You are entertaining a guest so 
unlike kindness that kindness will not come 
and dwell under the same roof. The most 



Malta and No Little Kindness. 115 

exhausting and unhealthy and ruinous feeling 
on earth is a revengeful spirit or retaliating 
spirit, as I know by experience, for I have 
tried it for five or ten minutes at a time. 
When some mean thing has been done me or 
said about me, I have felt, 4 4 1 will pay him 
in his own coin. I will show him up. The 
ingrate! The traitor! The liar! The villain !" 
But five or ten minutes of the feeling have been 
so unnerving and exhausting I have abandoned 
it, and I cannot understand how people can go 
about torturing themselves five or ten or 
twenty years, trying to get even with some- 
body. The only way you will ever triumph 
over your enemies is by forgiving them and 
wishing them all good and no evil. As male- 
volence is the most uneasy and profitless and 
dangerous feeling, kindness is the most health- 
ful and delightful. And this is not an abstrac- 
tion. As I have tried a little of the retaliatory 
feeling, so I have tried a little of the forgiving. 
I do not want to leave this world until I have 



n6 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

taken vengeance upon every man that ever did 
me a wrong, by doing him a kindness. In 
most of such cases I have already succeeded, 
but there are a few malignants whom I am yet 
pursuing and I shall not be content until I 
have in some wise helped them or benefited 
them or blessed them. Let us all pray for 
this spirit of kindness. It will settle a thou- 
sand questions. It will change the phase of 
everything. It will mellow through and 
through our entire nature. It will transform 
a lifetime. It is not a feeling gotten up for 
occasions, but perennial. That is the reason 
I like petunias better than morning-glories. 
They look very much alike, and if I should 
put in your hand a petunia and a morning- 
glory you could hardly tell which is the 
petunia and which the morning-glory; but the 
morning-glory blooms only a few hours and 
then shuts up for the day, w^hile the petunia 
is in as wide-spread a glow at twelve o'clock 
at noon and at six o'clock in the evening as at 



Malta and No Little Kindness. 117 

sunrise. And this grace of kindness is not 
spasmodic, is not intermittent, is not for a 
little while, but it irradiates the whole nature, 
all through and clear on till the sunset of our 
earthly existence. Kindness! I am resolved 
to get it? Are you resolved to get it? It 
does not come by hap-hazard, but through 
culture under the Divine help. Thistles grow 
without culture. Rocky Mountain sage grass 
grows without culture. Mullen stalks grow 
without culture. But that great red rose in 
the conservatory, its leaves packed on leaves, 
deep-dyed as though it had been obliged 
to fight for its beauty and it were still reeking 
with the carnage of the battle, that rose 
needed to be cultured and through long years 
its floral ancestors were cultured. O God ! 
implant kindness in all our souls, and then 
give us grace to watch it, to enrich it, to 
develop it! 

The King of Prussia had presented to him 
by the Empress of Russia the root of a rare 



n8 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 



flower, and it was put in the royal gardens on 
an island, and the head gardener, Herr Fintel- 
mann, was told to watch it. And one day it 
put forth its glory. Three days of every week 
the people were admitted to these gardens, and 
a young man, probably not realizing what a 
wrong thing he was doing, plucked this 
flower and put it in his button-hole, and the 
gardener arrested him as he was crossing at 
the ferry, and asked the king to throw open 
no more his garden to the public. The king 
replied, c ' Shall I deny to the thousands of 
good people of my country the privilege of 
seeing this garden because one visitor has done 
wrong ? No, let them come and see the beau- 
tiful grounds." And when the gardener 
wished to give the king the name of the of- 
fender who had taken the royal flower, he 
said, u No, my memory is very tenacious and 
I do not want to have in my mind the name 
of the offender, lest it should hinder me grant- 
ing him a favor some other time. 1 } Now, I 



Malta and No Little Kindness, 119 

want you to know that kindness is a royal 
flower and, blessed be God, the King of mercy 
and grace, that by a Divine gift and not by 
purloining, we may pluck this royal flower 
and not wear it on the outside of our nature 
but wear it in our soul and wear it forever, its 
radiance and aroma not more wonderful for 
time than wonderful for eternity. 

Still further, I must speak of kindness of 
word. When you meet any one do you say a 
pleasant thing or an unpleasant ? Do you tell 
him of agreeable things you have heard about 
him, or the disagreeable ? When he leaves 
you, does he feel better or does he feel worse ? 
Oh, the power of the tongue for the produc- 
tion of happiness or misery ! One would think 
from the way the tongue is caged in we might 
take the hint that it has a dangerous power. 
First it is chained to the back part of the 
mouth by strong muscle. Then it is sur- 
rounded by the teeth of the lower jaw, so 
many ivory bars; and then by the teeth of 



120 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

the upper jaw, more ivory bars. Then out- 
side of all are the two lips with the power of 
compression and arrest. And yet notwith- 
standing these four imprisonments or limita- 
tions, how many take no hint in regard to the 
dangerous power of the tongue, and the re- 
sults are laceration, scarification, and damna- 
tion. There are those if they know a good 
thing about you and a bad thing, will men- 
tion the bad thing and act as though they 
had never heard the good thing. Now there 
are two sides to almost every one's character, 
and we have the choice of overhauling the 
virtue or the vice. We can greet Paul and the 
ship's crew as they come up the beach of 
Malta, with the words, c 1 What a sorry look- 
ing set you are ! How little of navigation you 
must know to run on these rocks ! Didn' t you 
know better than to put out on the Mediter- 
ranean this wintry month? It was not much 
of a ship anyhow or it would not have gone 
to pieces so soon as that. Well, what do you 



Malta and No Little Kindness. 121 

want ? We have hard enough work to make 
a living for ourselves, without having thrust 
on us two hundred and seventy-six ragamuf- 
fins. } \ Not so said the Maltese. I think they 
said : ' 4 Come in ! Sit down by the fire and 
warm yourselves! Glad that you all got off 
with your lives. Make yourselves at home. 
You are welcome to all we have until some 
ship comes in sight and you resume your voy- 
age. Here, let me put a bandage on your 
forehead, for that is an ugly gash you got from 
the floating timbers, and here is a man with a 
broken arm. We will have a doctor come to 
attend to this fracture. ' ' And though for three 
months the kindness went on, we have but 
little more than this brief record: "The 
barbarous people showed us no little kind- 
ness. 5 ' 

Oh! say the cordial thing! Say the useful 
thing! Say the hospitable thing! Say the 
helpful thing! Say the Christlike thing! 
Say the kind thing! I admit that this is 



122 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

easier for some temperaments than for others. 
Some are born pessimists, and some are born 
optimists, and that demonstrates itself all 
through everything. It is a cloudy morning. 
You meet a pessimist and you say, ' ( What 
weather to-day ? " He answers, u It's going 
to storm, M and umbrella under arm and a 
water-proof overcoat show that he is honest 
in that utterance. On the same block, a 
minute after, you meet an optimist, and you 
say, 1 1 What weather to-day ? M u Good 
weather; this is only a fog and will soon scat- 
ter. 1 1 The absence of umbrella and absence 
of water-proof overcoat show it is an honest 
utterance. On your way at noon to luncheon 
you meet an optimistic merchant and you say, 
4 1 What do you think of the commercial pros- 
pects ? 1 ' and he says, ' 1 Glorious. Great 
crops must bring great business. We are 
going to have such an Autumn and Winter 
of prosperity as we have never seen. 1 ' On 
your way back to your store you meet a pessi- 



Malta and No Little Kindness. 123 

mistic merchant. "What do you think of 
the commercial prospects ? ' ' you ask. And 
he answers, " Well, I don't know. So much 
grain will surfeit the country. Farmers have 
more bushels but less prices, and the grain 
gamblers will get their fist in. There is the 
McKinley bill; and the hay crop is short in 
some places, and in the Southern part of Wis- 
consin they had a hail storm and our business 
is as dull as it ever was. ' ' You will find the 
same difference in judgment of character. A 
man of good reputation is assailed and charged 
with some evil deed. At the first story the 
pessimist will believe in guilt. 4 4 The papers 
said so, and that's enough. Down with him ! ' ' 
The optimist will say, u I don't believe a word 
of it. I don't think a man that has been as 
useful and seemingly honest for twenty years 
could have got off* track like that. There are 
two sides to this story and I will wait to hear 
the other side before I condemn him." My 
hearer, if you are by nature a pessimist, make 



124 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

a special effort by the grace of God to extir- 
pate the dolorous and the hypercritical from 
your disposition, believing nothing against 
anybody until the wrong is established by at 
least two witnesses of integrity. And if guilt 
be proven find out the extenuating circum- 
stances, if there are any. Kindness! Let us 
morning, noon and night pray for it until we 
get it. When you can speak a good word for 
some one, speak it. If you can conscien- 
tiously give letter of commendation, give it. 
Watch for opportunities for doing good fifty 
years after you are dead. All my life has 
been affected by the letter of introduction that 
the Rev. Dr. Van Vranken, of New Bruns- 
wick Theological Seminary, wrote for me, a 
boy under him, when I was seeking a settle- 
ment in which to preach the Gospel. That 
letter gave me my first pulpit. Dr. Van 
Vranken has been dead more than thirty years, 
yet I feel the touch of that magnificent old 
professor. Strange sensation was it when I 



Malta and No Little Kindness. 125 

received a kind message from Rev. Thomas 
Guard, of Baltimore, the great Methodist ora- 
tor, six weeks after his death. By way of the 
eternal world ? Oh, no, by way of this world. 
I did not meet the friend to whom he gave 
the message until nearly two months after 
Thomas Guard had ascended. So you can 
start a word about some one that will be on 
its travels and vigorous long after the funeral 
psalm has been sung at your obsequies. Kind- 
ness! Why, if fifty men all aglow with it 
should walk through the lost world, methinks 
they would almost abolish perdition. 

Furthermore, there is kindness of action. 
That is what Joseph showed to his outrageous 
brothers. That is what David showed to 
Mephibosheth for his father Jonathan's sake. 
That is what Onesiphorus showed to Paul in 
the Roman penitentiary. That is what Wil- 
liam Cowper recognized when he said he 
would not trust a man who would with his 
foot needlessly crush a worm. That is what 



126 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

our assassinated President Lincoln demon- 
strated when his private secretary found him 
in the Capitol grounds trying to get a bird 
back to the nest from which it had fallen, and 
which quality the illustrious man exhibited 
years before when having with some lawyers 
in the carriage on the way to court passed on 
the road a swine fast in the mire, after a while 
cried to his horses "Ho!" and said to the 
gentlemen, u I must go back and help that 
hog out of the mire. 1 1 And he did go back 
and put on solid ground that most uninterest- 
ing quadruped. That was the spirit that was 
manifested by my departed friend Hon. Alex- 
ander H. Stephens of Georgia (and lovelier 
man never ^exchanged earth for heaven), when 
at Washington. A senator's w T ife who told 
my wife of the circumstances, said to him, 
4 1 Mr. Stephens, come and see my dead canary 
bird." And he answered, " No, I could not 
look at the poor thing without crying. 1 ' That 
is the spirit that Grant showed when at the 



Malta and No Little Kindness. 127 

surrender at Appomattox lie said to General 
I^ee, u As many of your soldiers are farmers 
and will need the horses and mules to raise 
the crops to keep their families from suffering 
next winter, let each Confederate who can 
claim a horse or a mule take it along with 
him. ' ' That is the spirit which last night ten 
thousand mothers showed to their sick child- 
ren coming to give the drink at the twentieth 
call as cheerfully and as tenderly as at the first 
call. Suppose all this assemblage, and all to 
whom these words shall come by printer's 
type, should resolve to make kindness an over- 
arching, undergirding and all-prevailing prin- 
ciple of their life, and then carry out the reso- 
lution, why in six months the whole earth 
would feel it. People would say : ' ' What is 
the matter ? It seems to me that the world is 
getting to be a better place to live in. Why, 
life after all is worth living. Why, there is 
Shylock, my neighbor, has withdrawn his law- 
suit of foreclosure against that man, and be- 



128 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

cause lie lias had so much sickness in his fam- 
ily, he is going to have the house for one year 
rent free. There is an old lawyer in that 
young lawyer's office, and do you know what 
he has gone in there for ? Why, he is help- 
ing fix up a case which is too big for the 
young man to handle, and the white-haired 
attorney is hunting up previous decisions, and 
making out a brief for the boy. Do you know 
that a strange thing has taken place in the 
pulpit, and all the old ministers are helping 
the young ministers, and all the old doctors 
are helping the young doctors, and the farm- 
ers are assisting each other in gathering the 
harvest, and for that farmer who is sick the 
neighbors have made a 1 bee, } as they call it, 
and they have all turned in to help him get 
his crops into the garner. And they tell me 
that the older and more skilful reporters who 
have permanent positions on papers are help- 
ing the young fellows who are just beginning 
to try and don't know exactly how to do it 



Malta and No Little Kindness. 129 

And after a few erasures and interpolations on 
the reporter's pad they say, { Now here is a 
readable account of that tragedy; hand it in 
and I am sure the managing editor will take 
it. ' And I heard this morning of a poor old 
man whose three children were in hot debate 
as to who should take care of him in his de- 
clining days. The oldest son declared it was 
his right because he was the oldest, and the 
youngest son said it was his right because he 
was the youngest, and Mary said it was her 
right because she better understood father's 
vertigo, and rheumatism, and poor spells, and 
knew better how to nurse him, and the only 
way the difficulty could be settled was by the 
old man's promise that he would divide the 
year into three parts, and spend a third of his 
time with each one of them. And neighbor- 
ing stores in the same line of goods on the 
same block are acting kindly to each other. 
It seems to me that those words of Isaiah are 
being fulfilled when he says, c The carpenter 
9 



130 From the Pyramids to tJte Acropolis. 

encouraged the goldsmith, and he that 
smootheth with the hammer him that smote 
the anvil, saying, It is ready for the soldering. ' 
What is the matter ? It seems to me that our 
old world is picking up. Why, the millen- 
nium must be coming in. Kindness has got- 
ten the victory." 

My hearers, you know and I know we are 
far from that state of things. But why not 
inaugurate a new dispensation of geniality. 
If w 7 e cannot yet have a millennium on a large 
scale, let us have it on a small scale, and un- 
der our own vestments. Kindness! If this 
world is ever brought to God that is the thing 
that will do it. You cannot fret the world up 
although you may fret the world down. You 
cannot scold it into excellence or reformation 
or godliness. 

The East wind and the West wind were one 
day talking with each other, and the East 
wind said to the West wind, i{ Don't you wish 
you had my power ? Why, when I start they 



Malta and No Little Kindness, 131 

hail me by storm signals all along the coast. I 
can twist off a ship's mast as easily as a cow's 
hoof cracks an alder. With one sweep of my 
wing, I have strewn the coast from Newfound- 
land to Key West with parted ship-timber. I 
can lift and have lifted the Atlantic Ocean. I 
am the terror of all invalidism, and to fight 
me back forests must be cut down for fires, 
and the mines of continents are called on to 
feed the furnaces. Under my breath the na- 
tions crouch into sepulchres. Don' t you wish 
you had my power?" said the East wind. 
The West wind made no answer, but started 
on its mission, coming somewhere out of the 
rosy bowers of the skies, and all the rivers 
and lakes and seas smiled at its coming. The 
gardens bloomed, and the orchards ripened, 
and the wheat fields turned their silver into 
gold, and health clapped its hands, and joy 
shouted from the hill tops, and the nations 
lifted their foreheads into the light, and the 
earth had a doxology for the sky, and the sky 



132 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

an anthem for the earth, and the warmth and 
the sparkle and the gladness and the foliage, 
and the flowers, and the fruits, and the beauty, 
and the life, were the only answer the West 
wind made to the insolence of the East wind's 
interrogation. 

Kindness to all ! Surely it ought not to be a 
difficult grace to culture when we see towering 
above the centuries such an example that one 
glimpse of it ought to melt and transform all 
nations. Kindness brought our I^ord from 
heaven. Kindness to miscreants, kindness to 
persecutors, kindness to the crippled and the 
blind and the cataleptic and the leprous and 
the dropsical and the demoniacal characterized 
Him all the way, and on the Cross, kindness to 
the bandits suffering on the side of Him, and 
kindness to the executioners while yet they 
pushed the spear, and hammered the spikes, 
and howled the blasphemies. All the stories 
of the John Howards and the Florence Night- 
ingales and the Grace Darlings and the Ida 



Malta and No Little Kindness. 133 

Lewises pale before this transcendent example 
of Him whose birth and life and death are the 
greatest story that the world ever heard, and 
the theme of the mightiest hosanna that 
heaven ever lifted. Yea, the very kindness 
that allowed both hands to be nailed to the 
horizontal timber of the Cross with that cruel 
thump! thump! now stretches down from the 
skies those same hands filled with balm for all 
our wounds, forgiveness for all our crimes, 
rescue for all our serfdoms. And while we 
take this matchless kindness from God, may 
it be found that we have uttered our last bitter 
word, written our last cutting paragraph, done 
our last retaliatory action, felt our last re- 
vengeful heart-throb. And it would not be 
a bad epitaph for any of us if by the grace of 
God from this time forth we lived such bene- 
ficent lives that the tombstone's chisel could 
appropriately cut upon the plain slab that 
marks our grave a suggestion from the text: 
i 1 He showed us no little kindness. ' ' But not 



134 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

until the last child of God has got ashore 
from the earthly storms that drove him on the 
rocks like Mediterranean Euroclydons, not 
until ail the thrones of heaven are mounted, 
and all the conquerors crowned, and all the 
harps and trumpets and organs of heaven are 
thrummed or blown or sounded, and the ran- 
somed of all climes and ages are in full chorus 
under the jubilant sw T ing of angelic baton, 
and we shall for thousands of years have seen 
the river from under the Throne rolling into 
the 1 1 sea of glass mingled with fire, ' 1 and 
this world we now inhabit shall be so far in 
the past that only a stretch of celestial mem- 
orv can recall that it ever existed at all, not 
until then shall we understand what Nehemiah 
calls ik the great kindness, M and David calls 
4 1 the marvellous kindness, ' 1 and Isaiah calls 
4 'the everlasting kindness" of God! 



&f)e (gospel &tc|)tpelago. 



4 4 When we had discovered Cyprus, we left it on the 
left hand. Acts xxi. 3 ; and " I John . . was in 
the isle that is called Patmos." Rev. i. 9. 



GOOD-BYE, Egypt ! Although interesting 
and instructive beyond any country in 
all the world, excepting the Holy Land, 
Egypt was to me somewhat depressing. It 
was a post-mortem examination of cities that 
died four thousand years ago. The mummies, 
or wrapped-up bodies of the dead, were pre- 
pared with reference to the Resurrection Day, 
the Egyptians departing this life wanting their 
bodies to be kept in as good condition as pos- 
sible so that they would be presentable when 
they were called again to occupy them. But 
if when Pharaoh comes to resurrection he 
finds his body looking as I saw his mummy in 
the Museum at Boulac, his soul will become 

(135). 



136 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 



an unwilling tenant. The Sphinx also was 

to me a stern monstrosity, a statue carved out 
of rock of red granite sixty-two feet high and 
about one hundred and forty-three feet long 
and having the head of a man and the body 
of a lion. We sat down in the sand of the 
African desert to study it. With a cold smile 
it has looked down upon thousands of years 
of earthly history; Egyptian civilization, 
Grecian civilization, Roman civilization; upon 
the rise and fall of thrones innumerable; the 
victory and defeat of the armies of centuries. 
It took three thousand years to make one 
wrinkle on its red cheek. It is dreadful in its 
stolidity. Its eyes have never wept a tear. 
Its cold ears have not listened to the groans 
of the Egyptian nation, the burden of which 
I tried to weigh last Sabbath. Its heart is 
stone. It cared not for Pliny when he meas- 
ured it in the first century. It will care noth- 
ing for the man who looks into its impertur- 
bable countenance in the last century. 



The Gospel Archipelago. 137 



But Egypt will yet come up to the glow of 
life. The Bible promises it.' The mission- 
aries, like my friend, good and great Doctor 
Lansing, are sounding a resurrection trumpet 
above those slain empires. There will be 
some other Joseph at Memphis. There will 
be some other Moses on the banks of the Nile. 
There will be some other Hypatia to teach 
good morals to the degraded. When, soon 
after my arrival in Egypt, I took part in the 
solemn and tender obsequies of a missionary 
from our own land, dying there far away from 
the sepulchres of her fathers, and saw around 
her the dusky and weeping congregation of 
those whom she had come to save, I said to 
myself : "Here is self-sacrifice of the noblest 
type. Here is heroism immortal. Here is a 
queen unto God forever. Here is something 
grander than the Pyramids. Here is that 
which thrills the heavens. Here is a speci- 
men of that which will yet save the world. ' ' 

Good-bye, Egypt ! This sermon finds us 



I3'8 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

on the steamer Minerva in the Grecian Archi- 
pelago, the islands of the New Testament, and 
islands Paulinian and Johannian in their 
reminiscence. What Bradshaw's Directory is 
to travellers in Europe, and what the railroad 
guide is to travellers in America, the book of 
the Acts in the Bible is to voyagers in the 
Grecian, or as I shall call it, the Gospel Ar- 
chipelago. The Bible geography of that 
region is accurate without a shadow of mis- 
take. We are sailing this morning on the 
same waters that Paul sailed, but in the op- 
posite direction to that which Paul voyaged. 
He was sailing southward and we northward. 
With him it was, Ephesus, Coos, Rhodes, 
Cyprus; with us it is reversed and it is, 
Cyprus, Rhodes, Coos, Ephesus. There is no 
book in the world so accurate as the Divine 
Book. My text says that Paul left Cyprus on 
the left ; we, going in the opposite direction, 
have it on the right. 

The steamer had stopped during the night 



The Gospel Archipelago. 139 



and in the morning the ship was as quiet as 
< this floor, when we hastened up to the deck 
and found that we had anchored off the island 
of Cyprus. In a boat, which the natives rowed 
standing up, as is the custom, instead of sit- 
ting down as when we row, we were soon 
landed on the streets where Paul and Barnabas 
walked and preached. Yea, when at Antioch 
Paul and Barnabas got into a fight — as minis- 
ters sometimes did, and sometimes do, for they 
all have imperfections enough to anchor them 
to this world till their work is done — I say, 
when because of that bitter controversy Paul 
and Barnabas parted, Barnabas came back 
here to Cyprus, which was his birthplace. 
Island wonderful for history ! It has been the 
prize sometimes won by Persia, by Greece, by 
Egypt, by the Saracens, by the Crusaders, and 
last of all, not by sword but by pen, and that 
the pen of the keenest diplomatist of the cen- 
tury, Lord Beaconsfield, who under a lease 
which was as good as a purchase, set Cyprus 



140 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

among the jewels of Victoria's crown. We 
went out into the excavations from which Di 
Cesnola has enriched our American museums 
with antiquities, and with no better weapon 
than our foot we stirred up the ground deep 
enough to get a tear-bottle in which some 
mourner shed his tears thousands of years ago, 
and a lamp which before Christ was born 
lighted the feet of some poor pilgrim on his 
way. That island of Cyprus has enough to set 
an antiquarian wild. The most of its glory is 
the glory of the past, and the typhoid fevers 
that sweep its coast, and the clouds of locusts 
that often blacken its skies (though two hun- 
dred thousand dollars were expended by the 
British Empire in one year for the extirpation 
of these noxious insects, yet failing to do the 
work), and the frequent change of govern- 
mental masters, hinder prosperity. But when 
the islands of the sea come to God, Cyprus will 
come with them, and the agricultural and 
commercial opulence which adorned it in ages 



The Gospel Archipelago, 141 



past will be eclipsed by the agricultural and 
commercial and religious triumphs of the ages 
to come. Why is the world so stupid that it 
cannot see that nations are prospered in tem- 
poral things in proportion as they are pros- 
pered in religious things ? Godliness is profit- 
able not only for individuals but for nations. 
Give Cyprus to Christ, give England to Christ, 
give America to Christ, give the world to 
Christ, and He will give them all a prosperity 
unlimited. Why is Brooklyn one of the queen 
cities of the earth ? Because it is the queen 
city of churches. Blindfold me and lead me 
into any city of the earth so that I cannot see 
a street or a warehouse or a home, and then 
lead me into the churches and then remove the 
bandage from my eyes, and I will tell you 
from what I see inside the consecrated walls, 
having seen nothing outside, what is that city's 
merchandise, its literature, its schools, its 
printing-presses, its government, its homes, 
its arts, its sciences, its prosperity, or its 



142 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

depression, and ignorance, and pauperism and 
outlawry. The altar of God in the church is 
the high-water mark of the world's happiness. 
The Christian religion triumphant, all other 
interests triumphant. The Christian religion 
low down, all other interests low down. So I 
thought as on the evening of that day we 
stepped from the filthy streets of Larnaca, 
Cyprus, on to the boat that took us back to the 
steamer, which had already begun to paw the 
waves like a courser impatient to be gone, and 
then we moved on and up among the islands 
of this Gospel Archipelago. 

Night came down on land and sea and the 
voyage became to me more and more sugges- 
tive and solemn. If you are pacing it alone, 
a ship's deck in the darkness and at sea is a 
weird place, and an active imagination may 
conjure up almost any shape he will, and it 
shall walk the sea or confront him by the 
smoke-stack, or meet him under the captain's 
bridge. But here I was alone on ship's deck 



The Gospel Archipelago. 143 

in the Gospel Archipelago, and do you wonder 
that the sea was populous with the past and 
that down the ratlines Bible memories de- 
scended ? Our friends had all gone to their 
berths. u Captain," I said, " when shall we 
arrive at the Island of Rhodes?" Looking 
out from under his glazed cap, he responded 
in sepulchral voice: u About midnight." 
Though it would be keeping unseasonable 
hours, I concluded to stay on deck, for I must 
see Rhodes, one of the islands associated with 
the name of the greatest missionary the world 
ever saw or ever will see. Paul landed there 
and that was enough to make it famous while 
the world stands and famous in heaven when 
the world has become a charred wreck. 

This island has had a wonderful history. 
With six thousand Knights of St. John, it at 
one time stood out against two hundred thou- 
sand warriors under ' ' Solyman the Magnifi- 
cent. ) ' The city had three thousand statues, 
and a statue to Apollo called Colossus, which 



144 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

has always since been considered one of the 
seven wonders of the world. It was twelve 
years in building and was seventy cubits high, 
and had a winding stairs to the top. It stood 
fifty-six years and then was prostrated by an 
earthquake. After lying in ruins for nine 
hundred years, it was purchased to be converted 
to other purposes, and the metal, weighing 
seven hundred and twenty thousand pounds, 
was put on nine hundred camels and carried 
away. We were not permitted to go ashore, 
but the lights all up and down the hills show 
where the city stands, and nine boats come out 
to take freight and to bring three passengers. 
Yet all the thousands of years of its history 
are eclipsed by the few hours or days that Paul 
stopped there. As I stood there on the deck 
of the Minerva, looking out upon the place 
where the Colossus once stood, I bethought 
myself of the fact that the world must have a 
God of some kind. It is to me an infinite pathos 
— this Colossus, not only of Rhodes but the 



The Gospel Archipelago, 145 



colossi in many parts of the earth. This is 

only the world's blind reaching up and feeling 

after God. Foundered human nature must 

have a supernatural arm to help it ashore. 

All the statues and images of heathendom are 

attempts to bring celestial forces down into 

human affairs. Blessed be our ears that we 

have heard of an ever-present God, and that 

through Jesus Christ he comes into our hearts 

and our homes, and with more than fatherly 

and motherly interest and affection He is with 

us in all our struggles and bereavements and 

vicissitudes. Rhodes needs something higher 

than the Colossus, and the day will come when 

the Christ, whom Paul was serving when he 

sailed into this harbor of Rhodes, shall take 

possession of that island. 

As we move on up through this Archipelago, 

I am reminded of what an important part the 

islands have taken in the history of the world. 

They are necessary to the balancing of the 

planet. The two hemispheres must have 
10 



146 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

them. As you put down upon a scale the 
heavy pound weights, and then the small 
ounces, and no one thinks of despising 
the small weights, so the continents are the 
pounds and the islands are the ounces. A 
continent is only a larger island and an island 
only a smaller continent. Something of what 
part the islands have taken in the world's 
history you will see when I remind you that 
the island of Salamis produced Solon, and that 
the island of Chios produced Homer, and the 
island of Samos produced Pythagoras, and the 
island of Coos produced Hippocrates. 

But there is one island that I longed to see 
more than any other. I can afford to miss the 
princes among the islands, but I must see the 
king of the Archipelago. The one I longed 
to see is not so many miles in circumference as 
Cyprus or Crete or Paros or Naxos or Scio or 
Mitylene, but I would rather, in this sail 
through the Grecian Archipelago, see that than 
all the others; for more of the glories of heaven 



The Gospel Archipelago, 147 



landed there than on all the islands and con- 
tinents since the world stood. As we come 
toward it I feel my pulses quicken. ' ' I, John, 
was in the island that is called Patmos. * ' It 
is a pile of rocks twenty-eight miles in circum- 
ference. A few cypresses and inferior olives 
pump a living out of the earth, and one palm 
tree spreads its foliage. But the barrenness 
and gloom and loneliness of the island made 
it a prison for the banished evangelist. Dom- 
itian could not stand his ministry and one day, 
under armed guard, that minister of the Gospel 
stepped from a tossing boat to these dismal 
rocks, and walked up to the dismal cavern 
which was to be his home and the place where 
should pass before him all the conflicts of com- 
ing time and all the raptures of a coming 
eternity. Is it not remarkable that nearly all 
the great revelations of music and poetry and 
religion have been made to men in banishment 
— Homer and Milton banished into blindness; 
Beethoven banished into deafness; Dante writ- 



148 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

ing his Divina Cointiiedia during the nineteen 
years of banishment from his native land ; 
Victor Hugo writing his Les Miserables exiled 
from home and country on the island of Guern- 
sey, and the brightest visions of the future 
have been given to those who by sickness or 
sorrow were exiled from the outer world into 
rooms of suffering. Only those who have been 
imprisoned by very hard surroundings have 
had great revelations made to them. So Pat- 
mos, wild, chill and bleak and terrible, was 
the best island in all the Archipelago, the 
best place in all the earth for divine reve- 
lations. Before a panorama can be success- 
fully seen, the room in w r hich you sit must be 
darkened, and in the presence of John was to 
pass such a panorama as no man ever before 
saw or ever will see in this world, and hence 
the gloom of his surroundings was a help rather 
than a hindrance. All the surroundings of the 
place affected St. John's imager}' when he 
speaks of heaven. St. John, hungry from 



The Gospel Archipelago. 149 



enforced abstinence, or having no food except 
that at which his appetite revolted, thinks of 
heaven; and as the famished man is apt to 
dream of bountiful tables covered with lux- 
uries, so St. John says of the inhabitants of 
heaven, ' 1 They shall hunger no more. ' ' Scar- 
city of fresh water on Patmos, and the hot 
tongue of St. John's thirst leads him to admire 
heaven as he says, ( ' They shall thirst no 
more." St. John hears the waves of the sea 
wildly dashing against the rocks, and each 
wave has a voice and all the waves together 
make a chorus and they remind him of the 
multitudinous anthems of heaven ; and he 
says, " They are like the voice of many 
waters." One day, as he looked off upon the 
sea, the waters were very smooth, as it is to- 
day while we sail them, and they were like 
glass and the sunlight seemed to set them on 
fire, and there was a mingling of white light 
and intense flame ; and as St. John looked 
out from his cavern home upon that brilliant 



150 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

sea, he thought of the splendors of heaven 
and describes them "as a sea of glass mingled 
with fire. J ' Yes, seated in the dark cavern of 
Patmos, though homesick and hungry and 
loaded with Domitian's anathemas, St. John 
was the most fortunate man on earth because 
of the panorama that passed before the mouth 
of that cavern. 

Turn down all the lights that we may better 
see it. The panorama passes, and lo ! the 
conquering Christ, robed, girdled, armed, the 
flash of golden candlesticks and seven stars in 
his right hand, candlesticks and stars meaning 
light held up and light scattered. And there 
passes a throne and Christ on it, and the seals 
are broken, and the woes sounded, and a 
dragon slain, and seven last plagues swoop, 
and seven vials are poured out, and the vision 
vanishes. And we halt a moment to rest from 
the exciting spectacle. Again the panorama 
moves on before the cavern of Patmos, and 
John the exile sees a great city representing all 



The Gospel Archipelago. 151 



abominations, Babylon towered, palaced, tem- 
pled, fountained, foliaged, sculptured, hang- 
ing-gardened, suddenly going crash ! crash ! 
and the pipers cease to pipe, and the trumpets 
cease to trumpet, and the dust and the smoke 
and the horror fill the canvas, while from above 
and beneath are voices announcing, ' ' Babylon 
is fallen, is fallen ! n And we halt again to 
rest from the spectacle. Again the panorama 
moves on before the cavern of Patmos, and 
John the exile beholds a city of gold, and a 
river more beautiful than the Rhine or the 
Hudson rolls through it, and fruit trees bend 
their burdens on either bank, and all is 
surrounded by walls in which the upholstery 
of autumnal forests, and the sunrises and sun- 
sets of all the ages, and the glory of burning 
worlds seem to be commingled. And the 
inhabitants never breathe a sigh, or utter a 
groan, or discuss a difference, or frown a dis- 
like, or weep a tear. The fashion they wear 
is pure white, and their foreheads are encircled 



152 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis, 

by garlands, and they who were sick are well, 
and they who were old are young, and they who 
were bereft are reunited. And as the last figure 
of that panorama rolled out of sight, I think 
that John must have fallen back into his 
cavern, nerveless and exhausted. Too much 
was it for human eye to look at. Too much 
was it for human strength to experience. 

My friends, I should not wonder if you 
should have a very similar vision after a while. 
You will be through this world, its cares, and 
fatigues, and struggles, and if you have served 
the Lord and have done the best you could, I 
should not wonder if your dying bed were a 
Patmos. It often has been so. I was reading 
of a dying boy who, while the family stood 
round sorrowfully expecting each breath would 
be the last, cried, " Open the gates! Open 
the gates! Happy! Happy!" Yes, ten 
thousand times in the history of the world has 
the dying bed been made a Patmos. You see 
the time will come when you will, O child of 



The Gospel Archipelago. 153 

God, be exiled to your last sickness as much 
as John was exiled to Patmos. You will go 
into your room not to come out again, for God 
is going to do something better and grander 
and happier for you than he has ever yet done. 
There will be such visions let down to your 
pillow as God gives no man if he is ever to 
return to this tame world. The apparent feel- 
ing of uneasiness and restlessness at the time 
of the Christian's departure, the physicians 
say, is caused by no real distress. It is an 
unconscious and involuntary movement, and I 
think in many cases it is the vision of heavenly 
gladness too great for mortal endurance. It is 
only heaven breaking in on the departing 
spirit. You see your work will be done and 
the time for your departure will be at hand, 
and there will be wings over you and wings 
under you, and songs let loose on the air, and 
your old father and mother gone for years will 
descend into the room, and your little children 
whom you put away for the last sleep years 



154 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis, 

ago will be at your side, and their kiss will be 
on your foreheads, and you will see gardens in 
full bloom and the swinging open of shining 
gates, and will hear voices long ago hushed. 
In many a Christian departure that you have 
known and I have known there was in the 
phraseology of the departing ones something 
that indicated the reappearance of those long 
deceased. It is no delirium, no delusion, but 
a supernal fact. Your glorified loved ones 
will hear that you are about to come, and they 
will say in heaven, ( 1 May I go down to show 
that soul the way up ? May I be the celestial 
escort ? May I wait for that soul at the edge 
of the pillow ! n And the Lord will say, u Yes. 
You may fly down on that mission. 5 ' And I 
think all your glorified kindred will come 
down, and they will be in the room, and 
although those in health standing round you 
may hear no voice and see no arrival from the 
heavenly world, you will see and hear. And 
the moment the fleshly bond of the soul shall 



The Gospel Archipelago. 



.*55 



break, the cry will be, 1 4 Follow me ! Up this 
way ! By this gilded cloud, apast these stars, 
straight for home, straight for glory, straight 
for God. 5 ' As on that day in the Grecian 
Archipelago, Patmos began to fade out of sight, 
I walked to the stern of the ship that I might 
keep my eye on the enchantment as long as I 
could, and the voice that sounded out of heaven 
to John the exile in the cavern on Patmos 
seemed sounding in the waters that dashed 
against the side of our ship: u Behold, the 
tabernacle of God is with men, and he will 
dwell with them, and they shall be his people, 
and God himself shall be with them, and be 
their God. And God shall wipe away all tears 
from their eyes; and there shall be no more 
death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall 
there be any more pain: for the former things 
are passed away. ' ' 



& $atmos Vision of a Boofc. 



44 And I took the little book out of the angel's hand, 
and ate it up : and it was in my mouth sweet as 
honey ; and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was 
bitter. And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy 
again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, 
and kings." — Rev. x. 10, ir. 



t*\OMITIAN, the Roman Emperor, had in 
U his realm a troublesome evangelist who 
would keep preaching, and so he exiled him 
to a barren island, as now the Russians exile 
convicts to Siberia, or as sometimes the Eng- 
lish Government used to send prisoners to 
Australia. The island I speak of is now called 
Patmos, and is so barren and unproductive 
that its inhabitants live by fishing. 

But one day the evangelist of whom I speak, 
sitting at the mouth of a cavern on the hill- 
side, and perhaps half asleep under the drone 

(156) 



A Patmos Vision of a Book. 157 

of the sea, has a supernatural dream, and 
before him pass, as in panorama, time and 
eternity. Among the strange things that he 
saw was an angel with a little book in his hand, 
and in his dream the evangelist asked for this 
little book, and the angel gave it to him, and 
told him to eat it up. As in a dream things 
are sometimes incongruous, the evangelist 
took the little book and ate it up. The angel 
told him beforehand that it would be very 
sweet in the mouth, but afterward he would 
be troubled with indigestion. True enough, 
the evangelist devours the book, and it becomes 
to him a sweetness during the mastication, 
but afterward a physical bitterness. 

Who the angel was and what the book was 
no one can tell. The commentators do not 
agree, and I shall take no responsibility of 
interpretation, but will tell you that it sug- 
gests to me the little book of creeds which 
skeptics take and chew up and find a very 
luscious morsel to their witticism, but after a 



158 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis, 

while it is to them a great distress. The angel 
of the Church hands out this little book of 
evangelism, and the antagonists of the Chris- 
tian Church take it and eat it up, and it makes 
them smile at first, but afterward it is to them 
a dire dyspepsia. 

All intelligent people have creeds — that is, 
favorite theories which they have adopted. 
Political creeds — that is, theories about tariff, 
about finance, about civil service, about gov- 
ernment. Social creeds — that is, theories 
about manners and customs and good neigh- 
borhood. ^Esthetical creeds — that is, theories 
about tapestry, about bric-a-brac, about styles 
of ornamentation. Religious creeds — that is, 
theories about the Deity, about the soul, about 
the great future. The only being who has no 
creed about anything is the idiot. This scof- 
fing against creeds is always a sign of profound 
ignorance on the part of the scoffer, for he has 
himself a hundred creeds in regard to other 
things. In our time the beliefs of evangelistic 



A Patmos Vision of a Book. 159 

churches are under a fusillade of caricature and 
misrepresentation. Men set up what they call 
orthodox faith, and then they rake it with the 
musketry of their denunciation. They falsify 
what the Christian churches believe. They 
take evangelical doctrines and set them in a 
harsh and repulsive way, and put them out of 
association with other truths. They are like 
a mad anatomist who, desiring to tell what a 
man is, dissects a human body and hangs up 
in one place the heart, and in another place 
the two lungs, and in another place an ankle 
bone, and says that is a man. They are only 
fragments of a man wrenched out of their 
God-appointed places. 

Evangelical religion is a healthy, symmet- 
rical, well-jointed, roseate, bounding life, and 
the scalpel and dissecting knife of the infidel 
or the atheist cannot tell you what it is. 
Evangelical religion is as different from what 
it is represented to be by these enemies as the 
scare-crow which the farmer puts in the corn- 



160 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

field to keep off the ravens is different from 
the farmer himself. 

For instance, these enemies of evangelism 
say that the Presbyterian Church believes that 
God is a savage sovereign, and that He made 
some men just to damn them, and that there 
are infants in hell a span long. These old 
slanders come down from generation to gen- 
eration. The Presbyterian Church believes 
no such thing. The Presbyterian Church 
believes that God is a loving and just sover- 
eign, and that we are free agents. u No, no! 
that cannot be, n say these men that have 
chewed up the creed and have the consequent 
embittered stomachs; " that is impossible; 
if God is a sovereign, we can' t be free agents. ' ' 
Why, my friends, we admit this in every other 
direction. I, De Witt Talniage, am a free 
citizen of Brooklyn. I go when I please and 
I come when I please, but I have at least four 
sovereigns. The Church court of our denomi- 
nation; that is my ecclesiastical sovereign. 



A Patmos Vision of a Book. 161 

The mayor of this city; he is my municipal 
sovereign. The governor of New York; he 
is my State sovereign. The President of the 
United States; he is my national sovereign. 
Four sovereigns have I, and yet in every fac- 
ulty of body, mind, and soul I am a free man. 
So, you see, it is possible that the two doc- 
trines go side by side, and there is a common- 
sense way of presenting it, and there is a way 
that is repulsive. If you have the two doc- 
trines in a worldly direction, why not in a 
religious direction ? If I choose to-morrow 
morning to walk into the Mercantile library 
and improve my mind, or to go through the 
conservatory of my friend at Jamaica, who has 
flowers from all lands growing under the arches 
of glass, and who has an aquarium all asquirm 
with trout and gold fish, and there are trees 
bearing oranges and bananas — if I want to go 
there, I can. I am free to go. If I want 
to go over to Hoboken and leap into a 

furnace of an oil factory, if I want to jump 
ii 



1 62 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

from the platform of the Philadelphia express 
train, if I want to jump from the Brooklyn 
bridge, I may. But suppose I should go to- 
morrow and leap into the furnace at Hoboken, 
who would be to blame ? That is all there is 
about sovereignty and free agency. God 
rules and reigns, and He has conservatories and 
He has blast furnaces. If you want to walk 
in the gardens, walk there. If you want to 
leap into the furnaces you may. 

Suppose now a man had a charmed key 
with which he could open all the jails, and he 
should open Raymond Street Jail and the New 
York Tombs and all the prisons on the con- 
tinent. In three weeks what kind of a coun- 
try would this be, all the inmates turned out 
of those prisons and penitentiaries? Suppose 
all the reprobates, the bad spirits, the out- 
rageous spirits, should be turned into the New 
Jerusalem. Why, the next morning the gates 
of pearl would be found off hinge, the linch- 
pin would be gone out of the chariot wheels, 



A Patmos Vision of a Book. 163 

the " house of many mansions 5 ' would be 
burglarized. Assault and battery, arson, 
libertinism, and assassination would reside in 
the capital of the skies. Angels of God 
would be insulted on the streets. Heaven 
would be a dead failure if there were no great 
lock-up, if all people without regard to their 
character when they leave this world go right 
into glory. 

I wonder if in the temple of the skies 
Charles Guiteau and John Wilkes Booth oc- 
cupy the same pew! Your common-sense 
demands two destinies! And then, as to the 
Presbyterian Church believing there are in- 
fants in perdition, if you will bring me a 
Presbyterian of good morals and sound mind 
who will say that he believes there ever was a 
baby in the lost world, or ever will be, I will 
make him a deed to all my property, and he 
can take possession to-morrow. 

So the Episcopalian Church is misrepre- 
sented by the friends of evangelism. They 



164 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

say that church substitutes forms and cere- 
monies for heart religion, and that it is all a 
matter of liturgy and genuflexion. False 
again. All Episcopalians will tell you that 
the forms and creeds of their Church are 
worse than nothing unless the heart go with 
them. 

So also the Baptist Church has been mis- 
represented. The enemies of evangelism say 
the Baptist Church believes that unless a man 
is immersed he will never get into heaven. 
False again. All the Baptists, close commun- 
ion and open communion, believe that if a 
man accept the Lord Jesus Christ he will be 
saved, whether he be baptized by one drop of 
water on the forehead, or be plunged into the 
Ohio or Susquehanna, although immersion is 
the only gate by which one enters their earthly 
communion. 

The enemies of evangelism also misrepre- 
sent the Methodist Church. They say the 
Methodist Church believes that a man can 



A Patmos Vision of a Book, 165 

convert himself, and that conversion in that 
chnrch is a temporary emotion, and that all a 
man has to do is to kneel down at the altar 
and feel bad and then the minister pats him on 
the back and says, " It is all right, " and that is 
all there is of it. False again. The Metho- 
dist Church believes that the Holy Ghost 
alone can convert a heart, and in that Church 
conversion is an earthquake of conviction and 
a sunburst of pardon. And as to mere 1 [ tem- 
porary emotion, ' ' I wish we all had more of 
the ' 4 temporary emotion ' ' which lasted Bishop 
Janes and Matthew Simpson for a half cen- 
tury, keeping them on fire for God until 
their holy enthusiasm consumed their bodies. 
So all the evangelical denominations are 
misrepresented. And then these enemies of 
evangelism go on and hold up the great doc- 
trines of the Christian Churches as absurd, 
dry, and inexplicable technicalities. 1 1 There is 
your doctrine of the Trinity, ' ' they say, 1 c ab- 
surd beyond all bounds. The idea that there 




1 66 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

is a God in three persons! Impossible. If it 
is one God He can't be three, and if there are 
three, they can't be one." At the same time 
all of us — they with us — acknowledge trinities 
all around us. Trinity is our own make-up — 
body, mind, soul. Body with which we move, 
mind with which we think, soul with which 
we love. Three, yet one man. Trinity in 
the air — light, heat, moisture — yet one atmos- 
phere. Trinity in the court room — three 
judges on the bench, but one court. Trini- 
ties all around about us, in earthly govern- 
ment and in nature. Of course, all the illus- 
trations are defective for the reason that the 
natural cannot fully illustrate the spiritual. 
But suppose an ignorant man should come up 
to a chemist and say, " I deny what you say 
about the water and about the air ; they are 
not made of different parts. The air is one ; 
I breathe it every day. The water is one ; I 
drink it every day. You can't deceive me 
about the elements that go to make up the air 



A Patmos Vision of a Book. 167 

and the water." The chemist would say, 
" You come up into my laboratory and I will 
demonstrate this whole thing to you. ' ' The 
ignorant man goes into the chemist's labora- 
tory, and sees for himself. He learns that the 
water is one and the air is one, but they are 
made up of different parts. So here is a man 
who says, "I can't understand the doctrine 
of the Trinity. ' ' God says, i 4 You come up 
here into the laboratory after your death, and 
you will see — you will see it explained ; you 
will see it demonstrated." The ignorant man 
cannot understand the chemistry of the water 
and the air until he goes into the laboratory, 
and we shall never understand the Trinity 
until we go to heaven. The ignorance of the 
man who cannot understand the chemistry of 
the air and water does not change the fact in 
regard to the composition of air and water. 
Because we cannot understand the Trinity, 
does that change the fact? 

4 * And there is your absurd doctrine about 



1 68 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

justification by faith, M say these antagonists 
who have chewed up the little book of evan- 
gelism, and have the consequent embittered 
stomach — " justification by faith; you can't 
explain it." I can explain it. It is simply 
this : when a man takes the Lord Jesus Christ 
as his Saviour from sin, God lets the offender 
off. Just as you have a difference with some 
one, he has injured you, he apologizes or he 
makes reparation, you say, " Now, that's all 
right, that's all right." Justification by faith 
Ss this : a man takes Jesus Christ as his Sav- 
sour, and God says to the man, ' ' Now, it was 
ull wrong before, but it is all right now ; it is 
<dl right." That was what made Martin 
IvUther what he was. Justification by faith, 
it is going to conquer all nations. 

" There is your absurd doctrine about re- 
generation," these antagonists of evangelism 
say. What is regeneration ? Why, regenera- 
tion is reconstruction. Anybody can under- 
stand that. Have you not seen people who 



A Patmos Vision of a Book, 169 

are all made over again by some wonderful 
influence? In other words, they are just as 
different now from what they used to be as 
possible. The old Constellation man-of-war 
lay down here at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. 
Famine came to Ireland. The old Constella- 
tion was fitted up, and though it had been 
carrying gunpowder and bullets it took bread 
to Ireland. You remember the enthusiasm as 
the old Constellation went out of our harbor, 
and with what joy it was greeted by the fam- 
ishing nation on the other side of the sea. 
That is regeneration. A man loaded up with 
sin and death loaded up with life. Refitted. 
Your observation has been very small indeed 
if you have not seen changes in characters as 
radical as that. 

About four weeks ago a man came into this 
church one night, and he was intoxicated, 
and at an utterance of the pulpit he said in a 
subdued tone, u That's a lie." An officer of 
the church tapped him on the shoulder and 



170 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

said, u You must be silent, or you must go 
out" The next night that stranger came, 
and he was converted to God. He had been 
engaged in the liquor business. He 
resigned the business. The next day he 
sent back the samples that had just been sent 
him. He began to love that which he hated. 
I baptized him by immersion. A large salary 
was offered him if he would return to his 
former business. He declined it. He would 
rather suffer with Jesus Christ than be pros- 
pered in the world. He wrote home a letter to 
his Christian mother. The Christian mother 
wrote back congratulating him, and said, 
"If in the change of business you have lack 
of means, come home ; you are always wel- 
come home. } ' He told of his conversion to a 
dissolute companion. The dissolute compan- 
ion said, 1 Well, if you have become a Chris- 
tian, you had better go over and talk to that 
dying girl. She is dying with quick consump- 
tion in that house." The new convert went 



A Patmos Vision of a Book. 171 

there. All the surroundings were dissolute. 
He told the dying girl that Jesus Christ would 
save her. "Oh," she said, "that can't be, 
that can't be ! What makes you think so? " 
4 4 1 have it here in a book in my pocket, ' ' he 
replied. He pulled out a New Testament. 
She said, 4 4 Show it to me ; if I can be saved 
show it to me in that book. ' ' He said, 4 4 I 
have neglected this book as you have neglected 
it for many years, and I don't know where to 
find it, but I know it is somewhere between 
the lids. ' ' Then he began to turn over the 
leaves, and, strange and beautiful to say, his 
eye struck upon this passage, 4 4 Neither do I 
condemn thee ; go and sin no more. ' ' She 
said, 44 It isn't possible that is there!" 
44 Yes," he said, 44 that is there." He held it 
up before her dying eyes, and she said : 4 4 Oh, 
yes, I see it for myself ; I accept the promise : 
4 Neither do I condemn thee ; go and sin no 
more. ' " In a few hours her spirit sped away 
to the Lord that gave it, and the new con- 



172 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

vert preached the funeral sermon. The man 
who a few days before had been a blasphemer 
and a drunkard and a hater of all that was 
good, he preached the sermon. That is re- 
generation, that is regeneration ! If there are 
any dry husks of technicality in that, where 
are they ? All made over again by the power 
of the grace of God. 

Some years ago a ship captain came in here 
and sat yonder under the gallery. He came 
in with a contempt for the Church of God and 
with an especial dislike for Talmage. When 
an opportunity was given he arose for prayer, 
and as he was more than six feet high, when 
he arose for prayer no one doubted that he 
arose ! That hour he became a Christian. He 
went out and told the ship owners and the 
ship commanders what a great change had 
been wrought in him, and scores and scores 
have been brought to God through his instru- 
mentality. 

A little while after his conversion he was 



A Patmos Vision of a Book. 173 

on a ship off Cape Hatteras in a thick and 
prolonged fog, and they were at their wits' ends 
and knew not what to do, the ship drifting 
about hither and thither, and they lost their 
bearings ; and the converted sea captain went 
to his room and asked God for the salvation 
of the ship, and God revealed it to him while 
he was on his knees that at a certain hour, 
only a little way off, the fog would lift ; and 
the converted sea captain came out on the 
deck and told how God heard his prayers. He 
said, u It is all right, boys, very soon now the 
fog will lift, ' ' mentioning the hour. A man 
who stood there laughed aloud in derision at 
the idea that God would answer prayer ; but 
at just the hour when God had assured the 
captain that the fog would lift there came a 
flash of lightning through the fog, and the 
man who had jeered and laughed was stunned 
and fell to the deck. The fog lifted. Yonder 
was Cape Hatteras lighthouse. The ship was 
put on the right course, and sailed on to the 
harbor of safety. 



174 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

When in seaport the captain spends most of 
his time in evangelical work. He kneels 
down by one who has been helpless in the bed 
for many months, and the next day she walks 
forth in the streets well. He kneels beside 
one who has been long decrepit, and he re- 
signs his crutches. He kneels beside one who 
has not seen enough to be able to read for ten 
years, and she reads the Bible that day. Con- 
sumptions go away, and those who have had 
diseases appalling to behold come up to 
rapid convalescence and to complete health. 
I am not telling you anything second-handed. 
I have had the story from the lips of those who 
were brought to health of body while at the 
same time brought to God. No second-hand 
story this. I have heard the testimony from 
men and women who have been cured. You 
may call it faith-cure, or you may call it the 
power of God coming down in answer to 
prayer ; I do not care what you call it, it is a 
fact. The scoffing sea captain, his heart full 



A Patmos Vision of a Book, 175 

of hatred for Christianity, now becomes a fol- 
lower of the meek and lowly Jesus, giving all 
his time to evangelical labors, or all the time 
he can spare from other occupations. That 
is regeneration, that is regeneration. Man all 
made over again. 

4 1 There is your absurd doctrine of vicarious 
sacrifice, ' ' say these men who have chewed up 
the little book of creeds and have the con- 
sequent embittered stomach. 4 4 Vicarious sac- 
rifice ! I,et every man suffer for himself! 
Why do I want Christ to suffer for me? I'll 
suffer for myself and carry my own burdens. ' * 
They scoff at the idea of vicarious sacrifice, 
while they admire it everywhere else except 
in Christ. People see its beauty when a 
mother suffers for her child. People see its 
beauty when a patriot suffers for his country. 
People see its beauty when a man denies him- 
self for a friend. They can see the beauty of 
vicarious sacrifice in every one but Christ. 

A young lady in one of the literary institu- 



176 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

tions was a teacher. She was very reticent 
and retired in her habits, and she formed no 
companionships in the new position she oc- 
cupied, and her dress was very plain — some- 
times it was very shabby. After a while she 
was discharged from the place for that reason, 
but no reason was given. In answer to the 
letter discharging her from the position, she 
said: "Well, if I have failed to please, I 
suppose it is my own fault. 1 1 She went here 
and there for employment, and found none, 
and in desperation and in dementia she ended 
her life by suicide. Investigation was made 
and it was found that out of her small means 
she had supported her father, eighty years of 
age, and was paying the way for her brother 
in Yale College on his way to the ministry. 
It was found that she had no blanket on the 
bed that winter, and she had no fire on the 
very coldest day of the season. People found 
it out, and there was a large gathering at the 
funeral, the largest ever at any funeral in the 



A Patmos Vision of a Book. 177 

place, and the very people who had scoffed 
came and looked upon the pale face, of the 
martyr, and all honor was done her ; but it was 
too late. Vicarious sacrifice. All are thrilled 
with such instances as that. But many are 
not moved by the fact that Christ paid His 
poverty for our riches, His self-abnegation for 
our enthronement, and knelt on the sharp 
edges of humiliation that we might climb 
over His lacerated shoulder into peace and 
heaven. 

Be it ours to admire and adore these doc- 
trines at which others jeer. Oh the depths 
of the riches both of the wisdom and knowl- 
edge of God ! How unsearchable is His wis- 
dom, and His ways are past finding out ! Oh 
the height, the depth, the length, the breadth, 
the infinity, the immensity, the eternity of 
that love ! L,et our earnest prayers go out in 
behalf of all those who scoff at these doctrines 
of grace. When the Iyondon plague was rag- 
ing in the last century, there was a hotel near 
12 



178 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

the chief burial-place that excited much com- 
ment. The dead carts went through the 
streets day and night, and the cry, " Bring 
out your dead ! 1 1 was answered by the bring- 
ing out of the forms of the loved ones, and 
they were put twenty or thirty in a cart, and 
the wagons went on to the cemetery ; and 
these dead were not buried in graves, but in 
great trenches, in great pits; in one pit eleven 
hundred and fourteen burials ! The carts 
would come up with their great burden of 
twenty or thirty to the mouth of the pit, 
and the front of the cart was lifted and the 
dead shot into the pit. All the churches in 
Ivondon were open for prayer day and night, 
and England was in a great anguish. At that 
very time, at a hotel, at a wayside inn near 
the chief burial-place, there was a group of 
hardened men, who sat day after day and 
night after night blaspheming God and imitat- 
ing the grief-struck who went by to the burial- 
place. These men sat there day after day, 



A Patmos Vision of a Book, 179 

and night after night, and they scoffed at men, 
and they scoffed at women, and they scoffed at 
God. But after a while one of them was 
struck with the plague, and in two weeks all 
of the group were down in the trench from 
the margin of which they had uttered their 
ribaldry. My friends, a greater plague is 
abroad in the world. Millions have died of 
it. Millions are smitten with it now. Plague 
of sin, plague of sorrow, plague of wretched- 
ness, plague of woe. And consecrated men 
and women from all Christendom are going 
out trying to stay the plague and alleviate the 
anguish, and there is a group of men in this 
country base enough to sit and deride the 
work. They scoff at the Bible, and they scoff 
at evangelism, and they scoff at Jesus Christ, 
and they scoff at God. If these words shall 
reach them, either while they are sitting here 
to-day, or through the printing-press, let me 
tell them to remember the fate of that group 
in the wayside inn while the plague spread 



180 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

its two black wings oyer the doomed city of 
London. 

Oh, instead of us being scoffers, let us be 
disciples ! c c Blessed is the man that walketh 
not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand- 
eth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the 
seat of the scornful. ' } 



% $atmos Piston of Sates. 



41 And the twelve gates were twelve pearls." — Rev. 
xxi. 21. 



OUR subject speaks of a great metropolis, 
the existence of which many have 
doubted. Standing on the wharf and looking 
off upon the harbor, and seeing the merchant- 
men coming up the bay, the flags of foreign 
nations streaming from the top-gallants, you 
immediately make up your mind that those 
vessels came from foreign ports, and you say, 
( ' That is from Hamburg, and that is from 
Marseilles, and that is from Southampton, and 
that is from Havana, ' ' and your supposition is 
accurate. But from the city of which I am 
now speaking no weather-beaten merchant- 
men or frigates with scarred bulkhead have 
ever come. There has been a vast emigration 
(181) 



1 82 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

into that city, but no emigration from it — so 
far as our natural vision can descry. 4 4 There 
is no such city, ' ' says the undevout astronomer; 
4 4 I have stood in high towers with a mighty 
telescope, and have swept the heavens, and I 
have seen spots on the sun and caverns in the 
moon; but no towers have ever risen on my 
vision, no palaces, no temples, no shining 
streets, no massive wall. There is no such 
city." Even very good people tell me that 
heaven is not a material organism, but a grand 
spiritual fact, and that the Bible descriptions 
of it are in all cases to be taken figuratively. 
I bring in reply to this what Christ said, and 
He ought to know: 44 1 go to prepare n — not 
a theory, not a principle, not a sentiment; 
but 44 1 go to prepare a place for you. ' ' The 
resurrected body implies this. If my foot 
is to be reformed from the dust, it must have 
something to tread on. If my hand is to be re- 
constructed, it must have something to handle. 
If my eye, having gone out in death, is to be 



A Patmos Vision of Gates. 183 

rekindled, I must have something to gaze on. 
Your adverse theory seems to imply that the 
resurrected body is to be hung on nothing, or 
to walk in air, or to float among the intangi- 
bles. You may say, if there be material or- 
ganisms then a soul in heaven will be 
cramped and hindered in its enjoyments; but 
I answer: Did not Adam and Eve have plenty 
of room in the Garden of Eden ? Although 
only a few miles would have described the 
circumference of that place, they had ample 
room. And do you not suppose that God, in 
the immensities, can build a place large 
enough to give the whole race room, even 
though there be material organisms ? 

Herschel looked into the heavens. As a 
Swiss guide puts his Alpine stock between 
the glaciers and crosses over from crag to 
crag, so Herschel planted his telescope be- 
tween the worlds and glided from star to star, 
until he could announce to us that we live in 
a part of the universe but sparsely strewn 



184 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

with worlds; and he peers out into immensity 
until he finds a region no larger than our solar 
system in which there are fifty thousand 
worlds moving. And Professor Lang says that, 
by a philosophical reasoning, there must be 
somewhere a world where there is no darkness, 
but everlasting sunshine; so that I do not 
know but that it is simply because we have 
no telescope powerful enough that we cannot 
see into the land where there is no darkness 
at all, and catch a glimpse of the burnished 
pinnacles. As a conquering army marching 
on to take a city, comes at nightfall to the 
crest of a mountain from which, in the midst 
of the landscape, they see the castles they are 
to capture, and rein in their war chargers, 
and halt to take a good look before they pitch 
their tents for the night; so now, coming as 
we do on this mountain-top of prospect, I 
command this regiment of God to rein in their 
thoughts and halt, and before they pitch their 
tents for the night take one good, long look at 



A Patmos Vision of Gates. 185 

the gate of the great city. ( ' And the twelve 
gates were twelve pearls. ? ' 

In the first place I want you to examine 
the architecture of those gates. Proprietors 
of large estates are very apt to have an orna- 
mented gateway. Sometimes they spring an 
arch of masonry ; the posts of the gate flanked 
with lions in statuary; the bronze gate a re- 
presentation of interwining foliage, bird- 
haunted, until the hand of architectural genius 
drops exhausted, all its life frozen into the 
stone. Babylon had a hundred gates ; so had 
Thebes. Gates of wood, "and iron, and stone 
guarded nearly all the old cities. Moslems 
have inscribed upon their gateways inscrip- 
tions from the Koran of the Mohammedan. 
There have been a great many fine gateways, 
but Christ sets His hand to the work, and for 
the upper city swung a gate such as no eye 
ever gazed on, untouched of inspiration. With 
the nail of His own cross He cut into its won- 
derful traceries stories of past suffering and of 



1 86 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

gladness to come. There is no wood, or stone, 
or bronze, in that gate, but from top to base, 
and from side to side, it is all of pearl. Not 
one piece picked up from Ceylon banks, and 
another piece from the Persian Gulf, and 
another from the Island of Margarette; but 
one solid pearl picked up from the beach of 
everlasting light by heavenly hands, and 
hoisted and swung amid the shouting of angels. 
The glories of alabaster vase and porphyry 
pillar fade out before this gateway. It puts 
out the spark of feldspar and Bohemian dia- 
mond. You know how one little precious 
stone on your finger will flash under the gas- 
light. But oh ! the brightness when the great 
gate of heaven swings, struck through and 
dripping with the light of eternal noonday. 

Julius Caesar paid a hundred and twenty- 
five thousand crowns for one pearl. The Gov- 
ernment of Portugal boasted of having a pearl 
larger than a pear. Cleopatra and Philip II 
dazzled the world's vision with precious stones. 



A Patmos Vision of Gates. 187 

But gather all these together, and lift them, 
and add to them all the wealth of the pearl 
fisheries, and set them in the panel of one 
door, and it does not equal this magnificent 
gateway. An Almighty hand hewed this, 
swung this, polished this. Against this gate- 
way, on the one side, dash all the splendors 
of earthly beauty. Against this gate on the 
other side beat the surges of eternal glory. 
Oh! the gate! the gate! It strikes an infinite 
charm throngh every one that passes it. One 
step this side of that gate and we are paupers. 
One step the other side of that gate and we 
are kings. The pilgrim of earth going through 
sees in the one huge pearl all his earthly tears 
in crystal. Oh! gate of light! gate of pearl! 
gate of heaven! For our weary souls at last 
swing open. 

" When shall these eyes Thy heaven-built walls 

And pearly gates behold ; 
Thy bulwarks with salvation strong, 

And streets of shining gold ?" 



188 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

Oh! heaven is not a dull place. Heaven 
is not a contracted place. Heaven is not a 
stupid place. " I saw the twelve gates, and 
they were twelve pearls. ' ' 

In the second place I want you to count the 
number of those gates. Imperial parks and 
lordly manors are apt to have one expensive 
gateway, and the others are ordinary; but 
look around at these entrances to heaven, and 
count them. One, two, three, four, five, six, 
seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Hear 
it, all the earth and all the heavens. Twelve 
gates ! 

I admit this is rather hard on sharp sectari- 
anisms ! If a Presbyterian is bigoted, he brings 
his Westminster Assembly Catechism, and he 
makes a gateway out of that, and he says to 
the world, 1 i You go through there or stay 
out. n If a member of the Reformed Church 
is bigoted, he makes a gate of the Heidelberg 
Catechism, and he says, 1 ' You go through 
there or stay out. " If a Methodist is bigoted, 



A Patmos Vision of Gates, 189 

lie plants two posts, and lie says, 1 1 Now you 
crowd in between those two posts or stay out. ' > 
Or perhaps an Episcopalian may say, " Here 
is a liturgy out of which I mean to make a 
gate; go through it or stay out. n Or a Bap- 
tist may say, ' 4 Here is a water-gate : you 
go through that or you must stay out 1 ' And 
so in all our churches and in all our denomi- 
nations there are men who make one gate for 
themselves, and then demand that the whole 
world go through it. I abhor this contracted- 
ness in religious views. O small-souled man, 
when did God give you the contract for mak- 
ing gates ? I tell you plainly I will not go in 
that gate. I will go in at any one of the 
twelve gates I choose. Here is a man who 
says, 4 ' I can more easily and more closely 
approach God through a prayer-book. ' ' I say, 
" My brother, then use the prayer-book. n 
Here is a man who says, ' 4 1 believe there is 
only one mode of baptism, and that is immer- 
sion." Then I say, " L,et me plunge you." 



190 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

Anyhow, I say, away with the gate of rough 
panel and rotten posts and rusted latch, when 
there are twelve gates and they are twelve 
pearls. 

The fact is, that a great many of the 
churches in this day are being doctrined to 
death. They have been trying to find out 
all about God's decrees, and they want to 
know who are elected to be saved and who are 
reprobated to be damned, and they are keep- 
ing on discussing that subject when there are 
millions of souls who need to have the truth 
put straight at them. They sit counting the 
number of teeth in the jawbone with which 
Samson slew the Philistines. They sit on the 
beach and see a vessel going to pieces in the 
offing, and instead of getting into a boat, and 
putting away for the wreck, they sit discussing 
the different styles of oarlocks. God intended 
us to know some things, and intended us not 
to know others. I have heard scores of ser- 
mons explanatory of God's decrees, but came 



A Patmos Vision of Gates. 191 

away more perplexed than when I went. The 
only result of such discussion is a great fog. 
Here are two truths which are to conquer the 
world: Man, a sinner — Christ, a Saviour. Any 
man who adopts these two theories in his re- 
ligious belief shall have my right hand in 
warm grip of Christian brotherhood. 

A man comes down to a river in time of 
freshet. He wants to get across. He has to 
swim. What does he do ? The first thing is 
to put off his heavy apparel, and drop every- 
thing he has in his hands. He must go empty- 
handed if he is going to the other bank. And 
I tell you when we have come down to the 
river of death, and find it swift and raging, 
we shall have to put off all our sectarianism 
and lay down all our cumbrous creed, and 
empty-handed put out for the other shore. 
( ( What, 5 ' say you, ' ' would you resolve all the 
Christian Church into one kind of church? 
Would you make all Christendom worship in 
the same way, by the same forms ?' ' Oh, no. 



192 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

You might as well decide that all people shall 
eat the same kind of food without reference to 
appetite, or wear the same kind of apparel 
without reference to the shape of their body. 
Your ancestry, your temperament, your sur- 
roundings, will decide whether you go to this 
or that church, and adopt this or that 
church polity. One church will best get 
one man to heaven, and another church another 
man. I do not care which one of the gates 
you go through, if you only go through one 
of the twelve gates that Jesus lifted. 

Looking out at the one hundred and forty 
and four thousand, you cannot tell at 
what gate they came in. One Lord. One 
faith. One baptism. One glassy sea. One 
doxology . One triumph. One heaven. 4 'Why, 
Luther, how did you get in ?" "I came through 
the third gate. n " Cranmer, how did you get 
in ?" u I came through the eighth gate. 1 ' 
4 1 Adoniram Judson 3 how did you get through ?' 1 
" I came through the seventh gate. " " Hugh 



A Patmos Vision of Gates. 



195 



McKail, the martyr, how did you get 
through?" "I came through the twelfth 
gate." Glory to God! twelve gates, but one 
heaven. 

In the third place, notice the points of the 
compass toward which these gates look. They 
are not on one side, nor on two sides, nor on 
three sides, but on four sides. This is no fancy 
of mine but a distinct announcement. On the 
north, three gates, on the south three gates, on 
the east three gates, on the west three gates. 
What does that mean ? Why it means that all 
nationalities are included, and it does not make 
any difference from what quarter of the earth 
a man comes up; if his heart is right, there is a 
gate open before him. On the north three 
gates. That means mercy for L,apland, and 
Siberia, and Norway and Sweden. On the 
south, three gates. That means pardon for 
Hindostan, and Algiers and Ethiopia. On the 
east, three gates. That means salvation for 
China and Japan, and Borneo. On the west>. 
13 



194 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

three gates. That means redemption for 
America. It does not make any difference 
how dark-skinned or how pale-faced men may 
be, they will find a gate right before them. 
Those plucked bananas under a tropical sun. 
These shot across Russian snows behind rein- 
deer. From Mexican plateau, from Roman 
Campana, from Chinese tea-field, from Holland 
dyke, from Scotch highlands, they come, they 
come. Heaven is not a monopoly for a few 
precious souls. It is not a Windsor Castle, built 
only for royal families. It is not a small town 
with small population, but John saw it, and he 
noticed that an angel was measuring it, and 
he measured it this way ; and then he measured 
it that way, and whichever way he measured 
it, it was fifteen hundred miles ; so that Baby- 
lon and Thebes, and Tyre and Nineveh, 
and St. Petersburg and Canton, and Pekin 
and Paris, and London and New York, and 
all the dead cities of the past and all the living 
cities of the present, added together would not 
equal the census of that great metropolis. 



A Patmos Vision of Gates. 195 

Walking along a street, you can, by the 
contour of the dress, or of the face, guess 
where a man came from. You say, 4 4 That is 
a Frenchman; that is a Norwegian; that is an 
American. ' ' But the gates that gather in the 
righteous will bring them in irrespective of 
nationality. Foreigners sometimes get home- 
sick. Some of the tenderest and most pathetic 
stories have been told of those who left their 
native clime, and longed for it until they 
died. But the Swiss, coming to the high resi- 
dence of heaven, will not long any more for 
the Alps, standing in the eternal hills. The 
Russian will not long any more for the luxu- 
riant harvest fields he left, now that he hears 
the hum and the rustle of the harvests of ever- 
lasting light. The royal ones from earth will 
not long to go back again to the earthly court 
now that they stand in the palaces of the sun. 
Those who once lived among the groves of 
spice and oranges will not long to return now 
that they stand under the trees of life that 
bear twelve manner of fruits. 



196 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 



While I speak an ever-increasing throng is 
pouring through the gates. They are going 
up from Senegambia and Patagonia, from 
Madras, from Hong Kong. "What?" you 
say, " do you introduce all the heathen into 
glory ? M I tell you the fact is that the ma- 
jority of the people in those climes die in in- 
fancy, and the infants all go straight into 
eternal life, and so the vast majority of those 
who die in China and India, the vast majority 
of those who die in Africa, go straight into the 
skies — they die in infancy. One hundred and 
sixty generations have been born since the 
world was created, and so I estimate that there 
must be fifteen thousand million children in 
glory. If at a concert two thousand children 
sing, your soul is raptured within you. ! 
the transport when fifteen thousand million 
little ones stand up in white before the throne 
of God, their chanting drawing out all the 
stupendous harmonies of Dusseldorf, and 
Leipsic, and Boston. Pour in through the 



A Patmos Vision of Gates, 197 

I 

twelve gates, O ! ye redeemed ! banner lifted, 
rank after rank, saved battalion after saved 
battalion, until all the city of God shall hear 
the tramp, tramp. Crowd all the twelve gates. 
Room yet. Room on the thrones. Room in 
the mansions. Room on the river bank. L,et 
the trumpet of invitation be sounded until all 
earth's mountains hear the shrill blast and the 
glens echo it. L,et missionaries tell it in the 
pagoda, and colporteurs sound it across the 
Western prairies. Shout it to the Laplander 
on his swift sled ; halloo it to the Bedouin 
careering across the desert. News ! News ! 
A glorious heaven and twelve gates to get into 
it ! Hear it ! O you thin-blooded nations of 
eternal winter — on the north, three gates. 
Hear it ! O you bronzed inhabitants panting 
under equatorial heats — on the south, three 
gates. 

But I notice when John saw these gates they 
were open — wide open. They will not always 
be so. After a while heaven will have gathered 



198 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

up all its intended population, and the children 
of God will have come home. Every crown 
taken. Every harp struck. Every throne 
mounted. All the glories of the universe har- 
vested in the great garner. And heaven being 
made up, of course the gates will be shut. 
Austria in, and the first gate shut. Russia in, 
and the second gate shut. Italy in, and the 
third gate shut. Egypt in, and the fourth 
gate shut. Spain in, and the fifth gate shut. 
France in, and the sixth gate shut. England 
in, and the seventh gate shut. Norway in, 
and the eighth gate shut. Switzerland in, and 
the ninth gate shut. Hindostan in, and the 
tenth gate shut. Siberia in, and the eleventh 
gate shut. All the gates are closed but one. 
Now, let America go in with all the islands of 
the sea and all the other nations that have 
called on God. The captives all freed. The 
harvests all gathered. The nations all saved. 
The flashing splendor of this last pearl begins 
to move on its hinges. L,et two mighty angels 



A Patmos Vision of Gates. 199 

put their shoulders to the gate and heave it to 
with silvery clang, 'tis done ! It thunders. 
The twelfth gate shut ! Once more I want to 
show you the gate-keeper. There is one angel 
at each one of those gates. You say that is 
right. Of course it is. You know that no 
earthly palace, or castle, or fortress would be 
safe without a sentry pacing up and down by 
night and by day; and if there were no de- 
fences before heaven, and the doors set wide 
open with no one to guard them, all the vicious 
of earth would go up after a while, and all the 
abandoned of hell would go up after a while, 
and heaven, instead of being a world of light, 
and joy, and peace, and blessedness, would be 
a world of darkness and horror. So I am glad 
to tell you that while these twelve gates stand 
open to let a great multitude in, there are 
twelve angels to keep some people out. Robes- 
pierre cannot go through there, nor Hilde- 
brand, nor Nero, nor any of the debauched of 
earth who have not repented of their wicked- 



200 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

ness. If one of these nefarious men who 
despised God should come to the gate, one of 
the keepers would put his hand on his shoulder 
and push him into outer darkness. There is 
no place in that land for thieves, and liars, 
and whoremongers, and defrauders and all 
those who disgraced their race and fought 
against their God. If a miser should get in 
there he would pull up the golden pavement. 
If a house-burner should get in there, he would 
set fire to the mansion. If a libertine should 
get in there, he would whisper his abomina- 
tions standing on the white coral of the sea- 
beach. Only those who are blood-washed and 
prayer-lipped will get through. Oh, my brother, 
if you should at last come up to one of the 
gates and try to get through, not having 
a pass written by the crushed hand of the 
Son of God, the gate-keeper would with one 
glance wither you forever. 

There will be a password at the gate of 
heaven. Do you know what that password is ? 



A Patmos Vision of Gates, 201 

Here comes a crowd of souls up to the gate, 
and they say, i ' Let me in, let me in. I was 
very useful on earth. I endowed colleges, I 
built churches, and was famous for my chari- 
ties ; and having done so many wonderful 
things for the world, now I come up to get 
my reward." A voice from within says, " I 
never knew you. ' ? Another great crowd comes 
up, and they try to get through. They say, 
u We were highly honorable on earth, and the 
world bowed very lowly before us. We were 
honored on earth, and now we come to get 
our honors in heaven ; ' ' and a voice from within 
says, u I never knew you." Another crowd 
advances, and says, u We were very moral 
people on earth, very moral indeed, and we 
come up to get appropriate recognition. ' ' A 
voice answers, " I never knew you." 

After a while I see another throng approach 
the gate, and one seems to be spokesman for 
all the rest, although their voices ever and anon 
cry, "Amen! amen!" This one stands at 



202 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

the gate and says, " L,et me in. I was a 
wanderer from God. I deserve to die. I 
have come to this place, not because I 
deserve it, but because I have heard that 
there is a saving power in the blood of 
Jesus. M The gate-keeper says, "That is 
the password, 'Jesus ! Jesus ! 1 " and they 
pass in, and they surround the throne, and 
the cry is, "Worthy is the lamb that 
was slain to receive power, and riches, and 
wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, 
and blessing. n 

I stand here, this hour, to invite you into 
any one of the twelve gates. I tell you now 
that unless your heart is changed by the grace 
of God, you cannot get in. I do not care 
where you come from, or who your father was, 
or who your mother was, or what your brilliant 
surroundings — unless you repent of your sin 
and take Christ for your divine Saviour, you 
cannot get in. Are you willing, then, this 
moment, just where you are, to kneel down 



A Patmos Vision of Gates, 203 

and cry to the Lord Almighty for his de- 
liverance ? 

You want to get in, do you not ? Oh, you 
have some good friends there. Within a year 
there was some one who went out from your 
home into that blessed place. They did not. 
have any trouble getting through the gates, 
did they ? No, they knew the password, and, 
coming up, they said 1 ( Jesus ! ' ' and the cry 
was, "Lift up your heads, ye everlasting 
gates, and let them come in. M Oh, when 
heaven is all done, and the troops of God shout 
the castle taken, how grand it will be if you 
and I are among them. Blessed are all they 
who enter in through the gates into the City. 



& l^atmos Piston of £tlmce tn 
Pfeaben. 



"There was silence in heaven about the space of 
half an hour." — Rev. viii. i. 



^^HE busiest place in the universe is heaven. 
^ It is the centre from which all good in- 
fluences start ; it is the goal at which all good 
results arrive. The Bible represents it as act- 
ive with wheels and wings and orchestras and 
processions mounted or charioted. But my 
text describes a space when the wheels ceased 
to roll and the trumpets to sound and the 
voices to chant. The riders on the white 
horses reined in their chargers. The doxolo- 
gies were hushed and the processions halted. 
The hand of arrest was put upon all the 
splendors. ( ( Stop, Heaven ! 1 1 cried an omni- 
potent voice, and it stopped. For thirty 
(204) 



A Patmos Vision of Silence in Heaven. 205 

minutes everything celestial stood still. 
" There was silence in heaven about the space 
of half an hour. ' ' 

From all we can learn it is the only time 
heaven ever stopped. It does not stop as 
other cities for the night, for there is no night 
there. It does not stop for a plague, for the 
inhabitant never says, 1 ( I am sick. ' ' It does 
not stop for bankruptcies, for its inhabitants 
never fail. It does not stop for impassable 
streets, for there are no fallen snows nor 
sweeping freshets. What, then, stopped it for 
thirty minutes ? Grotius and Professor Stu- 
art think it was at the time of the destruction of 
Jerusalem. Mr. Lord thinks it was in the year 
311 A. D., between the close of the Diocletian 
persecution and the beginning of the wars by 
which Constantine gained the throne. But 
that was all a guess, though a learned and 
brilliant guess. I do not know when it was 
and I do not care when it was, but of the fact 
that such an interregnum of sound took place, 



2o6 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

I am certain. - 1 There was silence in heaven 
about the space of half an hour." 

iVnd, first of all, we may learn that God 
and all heaven then honored silence. The 
full power of silence many of us have yet to K 
learn. We are told that when Christ was ar- 
raigned " He answered not a word. n That 
silence was louder than any thunder that ever 
shook the world. Ofttimes when we are as- 
sailed and misrepresented, the mightiest thing 
to say is to say nothing, and the mightiest 
thing to do is to do nothing. Those people 
who are always rushing into print to get them- 
selves set right accomplish nothing but their 
own chagrin. Silence ! Do right and leave 
the results with God. Among the grandest 
lessons the world has ever learned are the 
lessons of patience taught by those who en- 
dured uncomplainingly personal or domestic 
or political injustice. Oh, the power of 
patient silence ! iEschylus, the immortal poet, 
was condemned to death for writing something 



A Putmos Vision of Silence in Heaven. 207 

that offended the people. All the pleas in 
his behalf were of no avail, until his brother 
uncovered the arm of the prisoner and showed 
that his hand had been shot off at Salamis. 
That silent plea liberated him. The loudest 
thing on earth is silence if it be of the right 
kind and at the right time. There was a 
quaint old hymn, spelled in the old style, and 
once sung in the churches : 

The race is not forever got 

By him who fastest runs, 
Nor the Battel by those peopell 

That shoot with the longest guns. 

My friends, the tossing sea of Galilee seemed 
most to offend Christ by the amount of noise 
it made, for he said to it, " Be still !*' 
Heaven has been crowning kings and queens 
unto God for many centuries, yet heaven 
never stopped a moment for any such occur- 
rence, but it stopped thirty minutes for the 
coronation of silence. " There was silence 
in heaven about the space of half an hour." 



208 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

Learn also from my text that heaven must 
be an eventful and active place, from the fact 
that it could afford only thirty minutes of 
recess. There have been events on earth and 
in heaven that seemed to demand a whole day 
or whole week or whole year for celestial 
consideration. If Grotius was right and this 
silence occurred at the time of the destruction 
of Jerusalem, that scene was so awful and 
so prolonged that the inhabitants of heaven 
could not have done jutsice to it in many 
weeks. After fearful besiegement of the two 
fortresses of Jerusalem — Antonio and Hippicus 
— had been going on for a long while, a 
Roman soldier mounted on the shoulder of 
another soldier hurled into the window of the 
Temple a firebrand, and the Temple was all 
aflame, and after covering many sacrifices to 
the holiness of God, the building itself became 
a sacrifice to the rage of man. The hunger of 
the people in that city during the besiegement 
was so great that as some outlaws were passing 



A Patmos Vision of Silence in Heaven. 209 

a doorway and inhaled the odors of food, they 
burst open the door, threatening the mother of 
the household with death unless she gave 
them some food, and she took them aside and 
showed them that it was her own child she 
was cooking for the ghastly repast. Six 
hundred priests were destroyed on Mount 
Zion because the Temple being gone there 
was nothing for them to do. Six thousand 
people in one cloister were consumed. There 
were one million one hundred thousand dead, 
according to Josephus. Grotius thinks that 
this was the cause of silence in heaven for 
half an hour. If Mr. Lord was right and this 
silence was during the Diocletian persecutions, 
by which eight hundred and forty-four thou- 
sand Christians suffered death from sword and 
fire, and banishment and exposure, why did 
not heaven listen throughout at least one of 
those awful years ? No ! Thirty minutes ! 
The fact is that the celestial programme is so 
crowded with spectacle that it can afford only 
14 



210 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis, 

one recess in all eternity and that for a short 
space. While there are great choruses in 
which all heaven can join, each soul there 
has a story of divine mercy peculiar to itself, 
and it must be a solo. How can heaven get 
through with all its recitatives, with all its 
cantatas, with all its grand marches, with all 
its victories? Eternity is too short to utter 
all the praise. 

Not only are all the triumphs of the past to 
be commemorated, but all the triumphs to 
come. Not only what we now know of God, 
but what we shall know of him after ever- 
lasting study of the Deific. If my text had 
said there was silence in heaven for thirty 
days, I should not have been startled at the 
announcement, but it indicates thirty minutes. 
Why, there will be so many friends to hunt 
up ; so many of the greatly good and useful 
that we shall want to see ; so many of the 
inscrutable things of earth we shall need 
explained ; so many exciting earthly ex- 



A Patmos Vision of Silence in Heaven. 211 

periences we shall want to talk over, and all 
the other spirits and all the ages will want the 
same, that there will be no more opportunity 
for cessation. How busy we shall be kept 
in having pointed out to us the heroes and 
heroines that the world never fully ap- 
preciated — the yellow-fever and cholera 
doctors, who died not flying from their posts ; 
the female nurses who faced pestilence in the 
lazarettos ; the railroad engineers who stayed 
at their places in order to save the train though 
they themselves perished. Hubert Goffin, 
the master-miner, who, landing from the 
bucket at the bottom of the mine, just as he 
heard the waters rush in, and when one jerk 
of the rope would have lifted him into safety, 
put a blind miner who wanted to go to his 
sick child in the bucket and jerked the rope 
for him to be pulled up, crying, ( 4 Tell them 
the water has burst in and we are probably 
lost ; but we will seek refuge at the other end 
of the right gallery ; M and then giving the 



212 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis, 

command to the other miners till they digged 
themselves so near out that the people from 
the outside could come to their rescue. The 
multitudes of men and women who got no 
crown on earth, w r e shall want to see when 
they get their crown in heaven. I tell you 
heaven will have no more half-hours to spare. 

Besides that, heaven is full of children. 
They are in the vast majority. No child on 
earth who amounts to anything can be kept 
quiet half an hour, and how are you going to 
keep five hundred million of them quiet half 
an hour ? You know heaven is much more of 
a place than it was when that recess of thirty 
minutes occurred. Its population has quad- 
rupled, sextupled, centupled. Heaven has 
more on hand, more of rapture, more of 
knowledge, more of intercommunication, 
more of worship. There is not so much 
difference between Brooklyn seventy-five years 
ago, when there were a few houses down on 
the East River and the village reached up 



A Patmos Vision of Silence in Heaven, 213 

only to Sands street, as compared with what 
this great city is now — yea, not so much 
difference between New York when Canal 
street was far up-town and now when Canal 
street is far down-town, than there is a 
difference between what heaven was when 
my text was written and what heaven is now. 
The most thrilling place we have ever been 
in is stupid compared with that, and, if we 
now have no time to spare, we shall then have 
no eternity to spare. Silence in heaven only 
half an hour ! 

My subject also impresses me with the 
immortality of a half-hour. That half-hour 
mentioned in my text is more widely known 
than any other period in the calendar of 
heaven. None of the whole hours of heaven 
are measured off, none of the years, none of the 
centuries. Of the millions of ages past, and 
the millions of ages to come, not one is 
especially measured off in the Bible. The 
half-hour of my text is made immortal. The 



214 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

only part of eternity that was ever measured 
by earthly timepiece was measured by the 
minute hand of my text. Oh, the half-hours! 
They decide everything. I am not asking 
what you will do with the years or months or 
days of your life, but what of the half-hours. 
Tell me the history of your half-hours, and I 
will tell you the story of your whole life on 
earth and the story of your whole life in 
eternity. The right or wrong things you can 
think in thirty- minutes, the right or wrong 
things you can say in thirty minutes, the 
right or wrong things you can do in thirty 
minutes are glorious or baleful, inspiring or 
desperate. L,ook out for the fragments of 
time. They are pieces of eternity. It was 
the half-hours between shoeing horses that 
made Elihu Burritt the learned blacksmith, 
the half-hours between professional calls as a 
physician that made Abercrombie the Christian 
philosopher, the half-hours between his duties 
as school-master that made Salmon P. Chase 



A Patmos Vision of Silence in Heaven, 215 

chief-justice, the half-hours between shoe- 
lasts that made Henry Wilson vice-president 
of the United States, the half-hours between 
canal-boats that made James A. Garfield pres- 
ident The half-hour a day for good books or 
bad books ; the half-hour a day for prayer or 
indolence ; the half-hour a day for helping 
others or blasting others ; the half-hour before 
you go to business, and the half-hour after 
your return from business ; that makes the 
difference between the scholar and the ignor- 
amus, between the Christian and the infidel, 
between the saint and the demon, between 
triumph and catastrophe, between heaven and 
hell. The most tremendous things of your 
life and mine were certain half-hours. The 
half-hour when in the parsonage of a country 
minister I resolved to become a Christian then 
and there; the half-hour when I decided to be- 
come a preacher of the Gospel; the half-hour 
when I first realized that my son was dead ; the 
half-hour when I stood on the top of my house 



216 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

in Oxford street and saw our church burn ; the 
half-hour in which I entered Jerusalem; the 
half-hour in which I ascended Mount Calvary ; 
the half-hour in which I stood on Mars Hill ; 
the half-hour in which the dedicator}' prayer 
of this Temple was made ; and about ten or 
fifteen other half-hours, are the chief times 
of my life. You may forget the names of the 
exact years or most of the important events of 
your existence, but those half-hours, like the 
half-hour of my text, will be immortal. I do 
not query what you will do with the Twentieth 
Century, I do not query what you will do with 
this year, but what will you do with the next 
half-hour ? Upon that hinges your destiny. 
And during that some of you will receive the 
Gospel and make complete surrender, and 
during that others of you will make final and 
fatal rejection of the full and free and urgent 
and impassioned offer of life eternal. Oh, 
that the next half-hour might be the most 
glorious thirty minutes of your earthly exist- 



A Patmos Vision of Silence in Heaven. 217 

ence ! Far back in history a great geographer 
stood with a sailor, looking at a globe that 
represented our planet, and he pointed to a 
place on the globe where he thought there 
was an undiscovered continent. The undis- 
covered continent was America. The geo- 
grapher who pointed where he thought there 
was a new world was Martin Behaim, and the 
sailor to whom he showed it was Columbus. 
This last was not satisfied till he had picked 
that gem out of the sea and set it in the crown 
of the world's geography. Oh, ye who have 
been sailing up and down the rough seas of 
sorrow and sin, let me point out to you another 
continent, yea, another world, that you may 
yourselves find a rapturous world, and that 
is the world a half-hour of which we now 
study. Oh, set sail for it ! Here is the ship 
and here are the compasses. In other words, 
make this half-hour, beginning at twenty 
minutes of twelve by my watch, the grandest 
half-hour of your life, and become a Christian. 



2i8 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

Pray for a regenerated spirit Louis XIV., 
while walking in the garden at Versailles met 
Mansard, the great architect, and the architect 
took off his hat before the king. ( 1 Put on 
your hat, 1 ' said the king, 1 1 for the evening is 
damp and cold. ' ' And Mansard, the architect, 
the rest of the evening kept on his hat. The 
dukes and marquises standing with bare heads 
before the king expressed their surprise at 
Mansard, but the king said, ( 1 I can make a 
duke or a marquis, but God only can make a 
Mansard/' And I say to you, my hearers, 
God only by his convicting and converting 
grace can make a Christian, but he is ready 
this very half-hour to accomplish it. 

Again, my text suggests a way of studying 
heaven so that we can better understand it. 
The word 1 1 eternity ' ' that we handle so much 
is an immeasurable word. Knowing that we 
could not understand that word, the Bible 
uses it only once. We say, " For ever and 
ever; n but, how long is " for ever and ever?" 



A Patmos Vision of Silence in Heaven. 219 

I am glad that my text puts under our eye 
heaven for thirty minutes. As when you 
would see a great picture, you put a sheet of 
paper into a scroll and look through it, or join 
your forefinger to your thumb and look 
through the circle between, and the picture 
becomes more intense, so this masterpiece of 
heaven by St. John is more impressive when 
we take only thirty minutes of it at a time. 
Now we have something that we can come 
nearer to grasping, and it is a quiet heaven. 
When we discourse about the multitudes of 
heaven, it must be almost a nervous shock to 
those who have all their lives been crowded 
by many people, and who want a quiet heaven. 
For many years I have been much of the 
time in crowds and under public scrutiny and 
amid excitements, and I have sometimes 
thought that for a few weeks after I reach 
heaven I should like to go down in some quiet 
part of the realm, with a few friends, and for 
a little while try comparative solitude. Then 



220 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

there are those whose hearing is so delicate 
that they get no satisfaction when you de- 
scribe the crash of the eternal orchestra, and 
they feel like saying, as a good woman in 
Hudson, N. Y., said, after hearing me speak 
of the mighty chorus of heaven : ' 1 That must 
be a great heaven, but what will become of 
my poor head?" Yes, this half-hour of my 
text is a still experience. ' t There was silence 
in heaven about half an hour. ' ' You will find 
the inhabitants all at home. Enter the King's 
Palace and take only a glimpse, for we have 
only thirty minutes for all heaven. ( * Is that 
Jesus?" "Yes." Just under the hair along 
his forehead is the mark of a wound made by 
a bunch of twisted brambles, and his foot on 
the throne has on the round of his instep 
another mark of a wound made by a spike, 
and a scar on the palm of the right hand, and 
a scar on the palm of the left hand. But, 
what a countenance! What a smile! What a 
grandeur! What a loveliness! What an over- 



A Patmos Vision of Silence in Heaven, 221 

whelming look of kindness and grace! Why, 
he looks as if he had redeemed a world! But, 
come on, for our time is short. Do you see 
that row of palaces ? That is the Apostolic 
Row. Do you see that long reach of archi- 
tectural glories? That is Martyr Row. Do 
you see that immense structure ? That is the 
biggest house in heaven; that is u the House 
of Many Mansions." Do you see that wall? 
Shade your eyes against its burning splendor, 
for that is the wall of heaven, jasper at the 
bottom and amethyst at the top. See this 
river rolling through the heart of the great 
metropolis ? That is the river concerning 
which those who once lived on the banks of 
the Hudson, or the Alabama, or the Rhine, 
or the Shannon, say, 1 4 We never saw the like 
of this for clarity and sheen. ' ' That is the 
chief river of heaven — so bright, so wide, so 
deep. But you ask, 1 1 Where are the asylums 
for the old?" I answer, " The inhabitants 
are all young." " Where are the hospitals 



222 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

for the lame ?" " They are all agile. n u Where 
are the infirmaries for the blind and deaf ?" 
4 4 They all see and hear. " 44 Where are the 
almshouses for the poor?" " They are all 
multi-millionaires. " " Where are the ineb- 
riate asylums ?" u Why there are no saloons. ' ' 
"Where are the graveyards ?" 4 4 Why they 
never die." Pass down those boulevards of 
gold and amber and sapphire, and see those 
interminable streets built by the architect of 
the universe into homes over the threshold of 
which sorrow never steps, and out of whose 
windows faces, once pale with earthly sick- 
ness, now look rubicund with immortal health. 
il Oh, let me go in and see them," you say. 
No, you cannot go in. There are those there 
who would never consent to let you come out 
again. You say, 4 4 Let me stay here in this 
place where they never sin, where they never 
suffer, where they never part." No, no! 
Our time is short, our thirty minutes are al- 
most gone. Come on! We must get back to 



A Patmos Vision of Silence in Heaven, 223 

earth before this half-hour of heavenly si- 
lence breaks up, for in your mortal state you 
cannot endure the pomp and splendor and 
resonance when this half-hour of silence is 
ended. The day will come when you can see 
heaven in full blast, but not now. I am now 
only showing you heaven in the dullest half- 
hour of all the eternities. Come on! There 
is something in the celestial appearance which 
makes me think that the half-hour of silence 
will soon be over. Yonder are the white 
horses being hitched to chariots, and yonder 
are seraphs fingering harps as if about to 
strike them into symphony, and yonder are 
conquerors taking down from the blue halls of 
heaven the trumpets of victory. Remember, 
we are mortal yet, and cannot endure the full 
roll of heavenly harmonies and cannot en- 
dure even the silent heaven for more than 
half an hour. Hark! the clock in the tower 
of heaven begins to strike, and the half-hour 
is ended. Descend! Come back! Come down! 



224 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

till your work is done. Shoulder a little 
longer your burdens. Fight a little longer 
your battles. Weep a little longer your griefs. 
And then take heaven not in its dullest half- 
hour, but in its mightiest pomp, and, instead 
of taking it for thirty minutes, take it world 
without end. But how will you spend the 
first half-hour of your heavenly citizenship 
after you have gone in to stay ? After your 
prostration in worship before the throne of 
Him who made it possible for you to get there 
at all, I think the rest of your first half-hour 
in heaven will be passed in receiving your re- 
ward if you have been faithful. I have a 
strangely beautiful book containing the pic- 
tures of the medals struck by the English 
Government in honor of great battles. These 
medals were pinned over the heart of the re- 
turned heroes of the army, on great occasions, 
the Royal family present, and the Royal bands 
playing: the Crimean medal, the L,egion of 
Honor, the Victoria Cross, the Waterloo medal. 



A Patmos Vision of Silence in Heaven . 225 

In your first half-hour in heaven in some 
way you will be honored for the earthly strug- 
gles in which you won the day. Stand up 
before all the Royal House of heaven and 
receive the insignia, while you are announced 
as victor over the droughts and freshets of the 
farm-field, victor over the temptations of the 
stock-exchange, victor over professional allure- 
ments, victor over domestic infelicities, victor 
over mechanic's shop, victor over the store- 
house, victor over home worriments, victor over 
physical distresses, victor over hereditary de- 
pressions, victor over sin and death and hell. 
Take the badge that celebrates those victories 
through our Lord Jesus Christ. Take it in the 
presence of all the galleries, saintly, angelic 
and Divine, while all heaven chants : ' £ These 
are they which came out of great tribulation, 
and have washed their robes, and made them 
white in the blood of the L,amb. n 



15 



a latmos Utston of $am Ban= 
tsfjro. 



Neither shall there be any more pain." — Rev. 

xxi. 4. 



HAT an exhilarating vision for St. John 
on Patmos; amid pain of hunger, pain 
of home sickness, pain of exile, pain of 
exposure, a glimpse of the land where there 
shall be no more pain ! 

The first question that you ask when about 
to change your residence to any city is, 1 1 What 
is the health of the place ? is it shaken of ter- 
rible disorders ? what are the bills of mortal- 
ity ? what is the death-rate ? how high rises 
the thermometer ? ' ' And am I not reason- 
able in asking — What is the sanitary condi- 
tion of the heavenly city into which we all 
hope to move ? My text answers it by say- 
(226) 




A Patmos Vision of Pain Banished, 227 

ing, " Neither shall there be any more pain." 

First, I remark, there will be no pain of 
disappointment in heaven. If I could put the 
picture of what you anticipated of life when 
you began it beside the picture of what you 
have realized, I should find a great differ- 
ence. You have stumbled upon great disap- 
pointments. 

Perhaps you expected riches, and you have 
worked hard enough to gain them ; you have 
planned and worried and persisted until your 
hands were worn and your brain was racked 
and your heart fainted, and at the end of this 
long strife with misfortune you find that if 
you have not been positively defeated it has 
been a drawn battle. It is still tug and tus- 
sle — this year losing what you gained last, 
financial uncertainties pulling down faster 
than you build. For perhaps twenty or thirty 
years you have been running your craft 
straight into the teeth of the wind. 

Perhaps you have had domestic disappoint- 



228 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

ment. Your children, upon whose education 
you lavished your hard-earned dollars, have 
not turned out as expected. Notwithstanding 
all your counsels and prayers and painstaking 
they will not do right. Many a good father 
lias had a bad boy. Absalom trod on David's 
heart. That mother never imagined all thi ; 
as twenty or thirty years ago she sat by that 
child's cradle. 

Your life has been a chapter of disappoint- 
ments. But, come with me, and I will show 
you a different scene. By God's grace, enter- 
ing the other city you will never again have a 
blasted hope. The most jubilant of expecta- 
tions will not reach the realization. Coming 
to the top of one hill of joy, there will be 
other heights rising upon the vision. This 
.song of transport will but lift you to higher 
anthems ; the sweetest choral but a prelude to 
more tremendous harmony ; all things better 
than you had anticipated — the robe richer, the 
crown brighter, the temple grander, the throng 
mightier. 



A Patmos Vision of Pain Banished. 229 

Further, I remark, there will be no pain of 
weariness. It is now twelve or fifteen hours 
since you quit work, but many of you are un- 
rested, some from overwork, and some from 
dullness of trade, the latter more exhausting- 
than the former. Your ankles ache, your 
spirits flag, you want rest. Are these wheels 
always to turn ? these shuttles to fly ? these 
axes to hew? these shovels to delve? these 
pens to fly ? these books to be posted ? these 
goods to be sold ? 

Ah! the great holiday approaches. No 
more curse of taskmasters. No more stooping 
until the back aches. No more calculation 
until the brain is bewildered. No more pain. 
No more carpentry, for the mansions are all 
built No more masonry, for the walls are 
all reared. No more diamond-cutting, for the 
gems are all set. No more gold-beating, for 
the crowns are all completed. No more agri- 
culture, for the harvests are spontaneous. 

Further, there will be no more pain of 



230 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

poverty. It is a hard thing to be really poor; 
to have your coat wear out and no money to 
get another; to have your flour barrel empty 
and nothing to buy bread with for your chil- 
dren; to live in an unhealthy row and no 
means to change your habitation; to have 
your child sick with some mysterious disease, 
and not be able to secure eminent medical 
ability; to have son or daughter begin the 
world and you not have anything to help them 
in starting; with a mind capable of research 
and high contemplation, to be perpetually 
fixed on questions of mere livelihood. 

Poets try to throw a romance about the 
poor man's lot; but there is no romance 
about it. Poverty is hard, cruel, unrelenting. 
But Lazarus waked up without his rags and 
his diseases, and so all of Christ's poor wake 
up at last without any of their disadvantages 
— no almshouses, for they are all princes; no 
rents to pay, for the residence is gratuitous; 
no garments to buy, for the robes are divinely 



A Patmos Vision of Pain Banished. 231 

fashioned; no seats in churcli for poor folks, 
but equality among temple worshippers. No 
hovels, no hard crusts, no insufficient apparel. 
" They shall hunger no more, neither thirst 
any more; neither shall the sun light on them, 
nor any heat. ' ' No more pain ! 

Further, there will be no pain of parting. 
All these associations must some time break up. 
We clasp hands and walk together, and talk 
and laugh and weep together; but we must 
after a while separate. Your grave will be 
in one place, mine in another. We shall look 
each other full in the face for the last time. 
We shall be sitting together some evening, or 
walking together some day, and nothing will 
be unusual in our appearance or our conversa- 
tion; but God knows that it is the last time, 
and messengers from eternity, on their errand 
to take us away, know it is the last time, and in 
heaven, where they make ready for our de- 
parting spirits, they know it is the last time. 

Oh, the long agony of earthly separation! 



232 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

It is awful to stand in your nursery fighting 
death back from the couch of your child, and 
try to hold fast the little one, and see all the 
time that he is getting weaker, and the breath 
is shorter, and make outcry to God to help us, 
and to the doctors to save him, and see it is 
of no avail, and then to know that his spirit 
is gone, and that you have nothing left but 
the casket that held the jewel, and that in two 
or three days you must eyen put that away, 
and walk around about the house and find it 
desolate, sometimes feeling rebellious, and 
then to resolve to feel differently, and to re- 
solve on self-control, and just as you have 
come to what you think is perfect self-control, 
to suddenly come upon some little sack, or 
picture, or shoe half worn out, and how all 
the floods of the soul burst in one wild wail 
of agony! 

Oh, my God, how hard it is to part, to close 
the eyes that never can look merry at our com- 
ing, to kiss the hand that will never again do 



A Patmos Vision of Pain Banished, 233 

us a kindness! I know religion gives great 
consolation in such an hour, and we ought to 
be comforted; but anyhow and anyway you 
make it, it is awful. 

On steamboat wharf and at rail-car window 
we may smile when we say farewell ; but these 
good-byes at the death-bed, they just take hold 
of the heart with iron pincers, and tear it out 
by the roots until all the fibres quiver and 
curl in the torture and drop thick blood. 
These separations are wine-presses into which 
our hearts, like red clusters, are thrown, and 
then trouble turns the windlass round and 
round until we are utterly crushed, and have 
no more capacity to suffer, and we stop crying 
because we have wept all our tears. 

On every street, at every doorstep, by every 
couch, there have been partings. But once 
past the heavenly portals, and you are through 
with such scenes forever. In that land there 
are many hand-claspings and embracings, but 
only in recognition- That great home circle 



234 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

never breaks. Once find your comrades there 
and yon have them forever. No crape floats 
from the door of that blissful residence. Xo 
cleft hillside where the dead sleep. All awake, 
wide awake, and forever. Xo pushing out of 
emigrant ship for foreign shore. Xo tolling 
of bell as the funeral passes. Whole genera- 
tions in glory. Hand to hand, heart to heart, 
joy to joy. Xo creeping up the limbs of the 
death-chill, the feet cold until hot flannels 
cannot warm them. Xo rattle of sepulchral 
gates. Xo parting, no pain. 

Further, the heavenly city will have no 
pain of body. The race is pierced with sharp 
distresses. The surgeon's knife must cut. 
The dentist's pincers must pull. Pain is 
fought with pain. The world is a hospital. 
Scores of diseases, like vultures contending 
for a carcass, struggle as to which shall have 
it. Our natures are infinitely susceptible to 
suffering. The eye, the foot, the hand, with 
immense capacity of anguish. 



A Patmos Vision of Pain Banished, 235 

The little child meets at the entrance of 
life manifold diseases. You hear the shrill 
cry of infancy as the lancet strikes into the 
swollen gum. You see its head toss in con- 
suming fevers that take more than half of 
them into the dust. Old age passes, dizzy and 
weak and short-breathed and dim-sighted. On 
ever} 7 north-east wind come down pleurisies 
and pneumonias. War lifts its sword and 
hacks away the life of whole generations. The 
hospitals of the earth groan into the ear of 
God their complaint. Asiatic choleras, and 
ship fevers and typhoids and London plagues 
make the world's knees knock together. 

Pain has gone through every street, and up 
every ladder, and down every shaft. It is on 
the wave, on the mast, on the beach. Wounds 
from clip of elephant's tusk, and adder's sting, 
and crocodile's teeth, and horse's hoof, and 
wheel's revolution. We gather up the in- 
firmities of our parents and transmit to our 
children the inheritance augmented by our 



236 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis, 

own sickness, and they add to them their own 
disorders, to pass the inheritance to other 
generations. In 262 the plague in Rome 
smote into the dust 5000 citizens daily. In 
544, A. D. in Constantinople, 1000 grave- 
diggers were not enough to bury the dead. 
In 1 81 3 the ophthalmia seized the whole 
Prussian army. At times the earth has 
sweltered with suffering. 

Count up the pains of Austerlitz, where 
30,000 fell ; of Fontenoy, where 100,000 fell; 
of Chalons, where 300,000 fell ; of Marius' 
fight, in which 290,000 fell ; of the tragedy 
at Herat, where Genghis Khan massacred 
1,600,000 men, and of Nishar, where be slew 
1,747,000 people ; of the 18,000,000 this 
monster sacrificed in fourteen years, as he went 
forth to do as he declared, to exterminate the 
entire Chinese nation and make the empire a 
pasture for cattle. Think of the death- 
throes of the 5,000,000 men sacrificed in 
one campaign of Xerxes. Think of the 120,- 



A Patmvs Vision of Pain Banished. 237 

000 that perished in the siege of Ostend, of 
300,000 dead at Acre; of 1,100,000 dead 
in the siege of Jerusalem ; of the dead 1,816,- 
000 at Troy, and then complete the review 
by considering the stupendous estimate of 
Edward Burke, that the loss by war has been 
thirty-five times the entire then present popu- 
lation of the globe. 

Go through and examine the lacerations, 
the gunshot fractures, the sabre wounds, the 
gashes of the battle-axe, the slain of bomb- 
shell and exploded mine and falling wall, and 
those destroyed under the gun-carriage and 
the hoof of the cavalry horse, the burning 
thirsts, the camp fevers, the frosts that 
shivered, the tropical suns that smote. Add 
it up, gather it into one line, compress it into 
one word, spell it in one syllable, clank it in 
one chain, pour it out in one groan, distill it 
into one tear. 

Ay, the world has writhed in six thousand 
years of suffering. Why doubt the possibil- 



238 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis, 



ity of a future world of suffering when we see 
the tortures that have been inflicted in this ? 
A deserter from Sebastopol coming over to the 
armies of the allies pointed back to the fort- 
ress and said, u That place is a perfect hell." 

Our lexicographers, aware of the immense 
necessity of having plenty of words to express 
the different shades of trouble, have strewn 
over their pages such words as " annoyance," 
4 i distress, " 11 grief, M u bitterness, " " heart- 
ache, " 11 miser\^, M u twinge," u pang," "tor- 
ture, " " affliction, " " anguish, " ' 1 tribula- 
tion," "wretchedness," "woe." But I have 
a glad sound for even' hospital, for even' sick 
room, for even- life-long invalid, for every 
broken heart. 1 1 There shall be no more 
pain." Thank God! Thank God ! 

No malarias float in the air. No bruised foot 
treads that street. No weary arm. No pain- 
ful respiration. No hectic flush. No one 
can drink of that healthy fountain and keep 
faint-hearted or faint-headed. He whose 



A Patmos Vision of Pain Banished. 239 

foot touches that pavement becometh an 
athlete. The first kiss of that summer air 
will take the wrinkles from the old man's 
cheek. Amid the multitude of songsters, not 
one diseased throat. The first flash of the 
throne will scatter the darkness of those who 
were born blind. See, the lame man leaps as a 
hart, and the dumb sing. From that bath of 
infinite delight we shall step forth, our weari- 
ness forgotten. Who are those radiant ones ? 
Why, that one had his jaw shot off at Fred- 
ericksburg ; that one lost his eyes in a powder 
blast ; that one had his back broken by a fall 
from the ship's halyards ; that one died of 
gangrene in the hospital. No more pain. 

Sure enough, here is Robert Hall, who 
never before saw a well day, and Edward Pay- 
son, whose body was ever torn of distress, and 
Richard Baxter, who passed through untold 
physical torture. All well. No more pain. 
Here too, are the Theban legion, a great host 
of 6666 put to the sword for Christ's sake. 



240 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

No distortion on their countenance. No fires 
to hurt them, or floods to drown them, or 
racks to tear them. All well. 

Here are the Scotch Covenanters, none to 
hurt them now. The dark cave and impreca- 
tions of Lord Claverhouse exchanged for tem- 
ple service, and the presence of Him who 
helped Hugh Latimer out of the fire. All 
well. No more pain. 

On this torrid morning I set open the door 
of heaven until there blows on you this re- 
freshing breeze. The fountains of God have 
made it cool, and the gardens have made it 
sweet. I do not know that Solomon ever 
heard on a hot day the ice click in an ice- 
pitcher, but he wrote as if he did when he 
said, ' 1 As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is 
good news from a far country. ' 5 

Clambering among the Green Mountains, I 
was tired and hot and thirsty, and I shall 
not forget how refreshing it was when, after a 
while, I heard the mountain brook tumbling 



A Pattnos Vision of Pain Banished, 241 



over the rocks. I had no cup, no chalice, so 
I got down on my knees and face to drink. 
O, ye climbers on the journey, with cut feet 
and parched tongues and fevered temples, lis- 
ten to the rumbling of sapphire brooks, amid 
flowered banks, over golden shelvings. 
Listen ! 1 1 The L,amb which is in the midst 
of the throne shall lead them unto living 
fountains of waters. " I do not offer it to you 
in a chalice. To take this you must bend. 
Get down on your knees and your face, and 
drink out of this great fountain of God's con- 
solation. ' 4 And I heard a voice from heaven, 
as the voice of many waters." 



16 



%Lt <&pt)t8\i$— &fje temple of Biana. 



44 Great is Diana of the Ephesians." — Acts xix. 34. 



E have landed this morning at Smyrna, a 
city of Asiatic Turkey. One of the 
seven churches of Asia once stood here. You 
read in Revelation, " To the church in Smyrna 
write." It is a city that has often been 
shaken by earthquake, swept by conflagration, 
blasted by plagues, and butchered by war, 
and here Bishop Polycarp stood in a crowded 
amphitheatre and when he was asked to give 
up the advocacy of the Christian religion and 
save himself from martyrdom, the pro-consul 
saying, u Swear and I release thee; reproach 
Christ, 1 ' replied : 1 1 Eighty and six years have 
I served him, and he never did me wrong; 
how then can I revile my King and Saviour?" 
When he was brought to the fires into which 
(242) 




At Ephesus — The Temple of Diana. 243 

he was about to be thrust, and the officials 
were about to fasten him to the stake, he said: 
( ' Iyet me remain as I am, for he who giveth 
me strength to sustain the fire will enable me 
also, without your securing me with nails, to 
remain unmoved in the fire. ' ' History says 
the fires refused to consume him; and under 
the winds the flames bent outward so that they 
did not touch his person, and therefore he was 
slain by swords and spears. One cypress bend- 
ing over his grave is the only monument to 
Bishop Polycarp. 

But we are on the way to the city of Ephe- 
sus. We must see Ephesus — associated with 
the most wonderful apostolic scenes. We 
hire a special railway train, and in about an 
hour and a half we arrive at the city of Ephe- 
sus, which was called ( ' The Great Metropolis 
of Asia, ' ' and 4 ' One of the Eyes of Asia, ' ' 
and u The Empress of Ionia," the capital of 
all learning and magnificence. Here, as I 
said, was one of the seven churches of Asia, 



244 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 



and first of all we visit the ruins of that church 
where once an Ecumenical Council of two 
thousand ministers of religion was held. 

Mark the fulfilment of the prophecy! Of 
the seven churches of Asia, four were com- 
mended in the book of Revelation and three 
were doomed. The cities having the four 
commended churches still stand; the cities 
having the three doomed churches are wiped 
out. It occurred just as the Bible said it 
would occur. Drive on and you come to the 
theatre, which was 660 feet from wall to wall, 
capable of holding 56,700 spectators. Here 
and there the walls arise almost unbroken, but 
for the most part the building is down. Just 
enough of it is left to help the imagination 
build it up as it was when those audiences 
shouted and clapped at some great spectacle. 
Their huzzas must have been enough to stun 
the heavens. Standing there, we could not 
forget that in that building once assembled a 
throng riotous for Paul's condemnation, be- 



At Ephesus — The Temple of Diana, 245 

cause what he preached collided with the 
idolatry of their national goddess. Paul tried 
to get into that theatre and address the excited 
multitude, but his friends held him back lest 
he be torn in pieces by the mob, and the 
recorder of the city had to read the Riot Act 
among the people who had shrieked for two 
mortal hours, till their throats were sore and 
they were black in the face, u Great is Diana 
of the Ephesians." 

Now, we step into the Stadium. Enough 
of its walls and appointments is left to show 
w r hat a stupendous place it must have been 
when used for foot races and for fights with 
wild beasts. It was a building 680 feet long 
by 200 feet wide. Paul refers to ~\vhat tran- 
spired there in the way of spectacle when he 
says, 1 ' We have been made a spectacle. ' ' 
Yes, Paul says, \ ( I have fought with beasts 
at Ephesus, " an expression usually taken as 
figurative, but I suppose it was literally true, 
for one of the amusements in that Stadium 



246 Front the Pyramids to the Acropolis, 

was to put a disliked man in the arena with a 
hungry lion or tiger or panther, and let the 
fight go on until either the man or the beast 
or both were slain. And was there ever a 
more unequal combat proposed ? Paul, accord- 
ing to tradition, small, crooked-backed and 
weak-eyed, but the grandest man in sixty cen- 
turies, is led to the centre, as the people shout, 
u There he comes, the preacher who has nearly 
ruined our religion. The lion will make but 
a brief mouthful of him. n It is plain that 
all the sympathies of that crowd are with the 
lion. In one of the underground rooms I 
hear the growl of the wild beasts. They have 
been kept for several days without food or 
water, in order that they may be especially rav- 
enous and bloodthirsty. What chance is there 
for Paul ? But you cannot tell by a man's size or 
looks how stout a blow he can strike or how 
keen a blade he can thrust. Witness, heaven 
and earth and hell, this struggle of Paul with 
a wild beast. The coolest man in the Stadium 



At Ephesus — The Temple of Diana, 247 

is Paul. What has he to fear? He has defied 
all the powers, earthly and infernal, and if his 
body tumble under the foot and tooth of the 
wild beast, his soul will only the sooner find 
disenthral tnent. But it is his duty, as far as 
possible, to preserve his life. Now I hear the 
bolt of the wild beast's door shove back, and 
the whole audience rise to their feet as the 
fierce brute springs for the arena and toward 
its small occupant. But the little missionary 
has his turn of making attack, and with a few 
well-directed thrusts the monster lies dead in 
the dust of the arena, and the Apostle puts 
his right foot on the lion and shakes him, and 
then puts his left foot on him and shakes him 
— a scene which Paul afterwards uses for an 
illustration when he wants to show how Christ 
will triumph over death : 1 c He must reign till 
he hath put all enemies under his feet; n yes, 
under his feet. Paul told the literal truth 
when he said, 1 1 I have fought with beasts at 
Ephesus, ' ' and as the plural is used I think he 



248 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

had more than one such fight, or several beasts 
were let loose upon him at one time. As we 
stood that day in the middle of the Stadium 
and looked around at the great structure, the 
whole scene came back upon us. 

But, we pass out of the Stadium, for we 
are in haste for other places of interest in 
Ephesus. To add to the excitement of the 
day one of our party was missing. No man 
is safe in that region alone unless he be armed 
and know how to take sure aim and not miss 
fire. Our companion, Dr. Louis Klopsch, 
had gone out on some explorations of his own, 
and through the gate where Paul had walked 
again and again, yet where no man unaccom- 
panied should adventure now. But, after 
some time had passed, and every minute 
seemed as long as an hour, and we had time 
to imagine everything horrible in the way of 
robbeiy and assassination, the lost traveller 
appeared, to receive from our entire party a 
volley of expostulation for the arousal of so 
many anxieties. 



At Ephesus — The Temple of Diana, 249 

In the midst of this city of Ephesus once 
floated an artificial lake, brilliant with painted 
boats, and through the River Caystros it was 
connected with the sea, and ships from all 
parts of the known earth floated in and out 
carrying on a commerce which made Ephesus 
the envy of the world. Great was Ephesus! 
Its gymnasia, its hippodrome, its odeon, its 
athenaeum, its forum, its aqueducts (whose 
skeletons are still strewn along the city), its 
towers, its castle of Hadrian, its monument 
of Androclus, its quarries, which were the 
granite cradle of cities; its temples, built to 
Apollo, to Minerva, to Neptune, to Mercury, 
to Bacchus, to Hercules, to Caesar, to Fortune, 
to Jupiter Olympus. What history and poetry 
and chisel and canvas have not presented has 
come up at the call of archaeologists' powder- 
blast and crowbar. 

But I have now to unveil the chief wonder 
of this chiefest of cities. In 1863, under the 
patronage of the English Government, Mr. 



250 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

Wood, the explorer, began at Ephesus to feel 
along under the ground at great depths for 
roads, for walls, for towers, and here it is — 
that for which Ephesus was more celebrated 
than all else besides — the Temple of the God- 
dess Diana, called the sixth wonder of the 
world; and in 1889 we stood amid the ruins of 
that temple, measuring its pillars, transfixed 
by its sculpture, and confounded at what was 
the greatest temple of idolatry in all time. 
As I sat on a piece of one of its fallen col- 
umns, I said, "What earthquake rocked it 
down, or what hurricane pushed it to the 
earth, or under what strong wind of centuries 
did the giant struggle and fall? n There have 
been seven temples of Diana, the ruins of 
each contributing something for the splendor 
of all its architectural successors. Two hun- 
dred and twenty years was this last Temple 
in construction. Twice as long as the United 
States has stood was that Temple in build- 
ing. It was nearly twice as large as St. Paul's 



At Ephesus — The Temple of Diana. 251 

Cathedral, London. L,est it should be dis- 
turbed by earthquakes, which have always 
been fond of making those regions their play- 
ground, the Temple was built on a marsh, 
which was made firm by layers of charcoal 
covered by fleeces of wool. The stone came 
from the quarry nearby. After it was decreed 
to build the Temple, it was thought it would 
be necessary to bring the building stone from 
other lands, but one day a shepherd by the 
name of Pixodorus, while watching his flocks, 
saw two rams fighting, and as they missed the 
interlocking of their horns and one fell, his 
horn knocked a splinter from the rock and 
showed by that splinter the lustrous whiteness 
of the rock. The shepherd ran to the city 
with a piece of that stone, which revealed a 
quarry from which place the Temple was 
built, and every month in all ages since, the 
mayor of Ephesus goes to that quarry to offer 
sacrifices to the memory of that shepherd who 
discovered this source of splendor and wealth 



252 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

for the cities of Asia Minor. In removing 
the great stones from the quarry to their de- 
stined places in the Temple, it was necessary, 
in order to keep the wheels, which were 
twelve feet in diameter, from sinking deep 
into the earth under the unparalleled heft, 
that a frame of timbers be arranged over 
which the wheels rolled. To put the immense 
block of marble in its place over the doorway 
of one of these temples was so vast and difficult 
an undertaking, that the architect at one time 
gave it up, and in his chagrin intended sui- 
cide; but one night in his sleep he dreamt 
that the stone had settled to the right place, 
and the next day he found that the great 
block of marble had by its own weight set- 
tled to the right place. The Temple of Diana 
was four hundred and twenty-five feet long by 
two hundred and twenty feet wide. All Asia 
was taxed to pay for it. It had one hundred 
and twenty-seven pillars, each sixty feet high, 
and each the gift of a king and inscribed with 



At Ephesus — The Temple of Diana. 253 

the name of the donor. Now you see the 
meaning of that passage in Revelation, just 
as a king presenting one of these pillars to the 
Temple of Diana had his own name chiselled 
on it and the name of his own country, so 
says Christ: u Him that overcome th will I 
make a pillar in the temple of my God, and I 
will write upon him the name of my God, and 
the name of the city of my God, which is 
New Jerusalem, and I will write upon him 
my new name. ' ' How suggestive and beau- 
tiful! 

In addition to those pillars that I climbed 
over while amid the ruins of Diana's Temple, 
I saw afterwards eight of those pillars in Con- 
stantinople, to which city they had been re- 
moved, and are now a part of the Mosque of 
St. Sophia. Those eight columns are all 
green jasper, but some of those which stood 
in Diana's Temple at Ephesus were fairly 
drenched with brilliant colors. Costly metals 
stood up in various parts of the Temple, 



254 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

where they could catch the fullest flush of the 
sun. A flight of stairs was carved out of one 
grape vine. Doors of cypress wood which 
had been kept in glue for years and bordered 
with bronze in bas-relief, swung against pil- 
lars of brass, and resounded with echo upon 
echo, caught up, and sent on, and hurled back 
through the corridors. In that building stood 
an image of Diana, the goddess. The im- 
pression was abroad, as the Bible records, that 
that image dropped plumb out of heaven into 
that Temple, and the sculptors who really 
made the statue or image were put to death, so 
that they could not testify of its manufacture 
and so deny its celestial origin. But the ma- 
terial out of which the image of Diana was 
fashioned contradicts that notion. This image 
was carved out of ebony and punctured here 
and there with openings kept full of spike- 
nard so as to hinder the statue from decaying 
and make it aromatic, but this ebony was cov- 
ered with bronze and alabaster. A necklace 



At Ephesus — The Temple of Diana. 255 

of acorns coiled gracefully around her. There 
were four lions on each arm, typical of 
strength. Her head was coronetted. Around 
this figure stood statues which by wonderful 
invention shed tears. The air by strange ma- 
chinery was damp with descending perfumes. 
The walls multiplied the scene by concaved 
mirrors. Fountains tossed in sheaves of light 
and fell in showers of diamonds. One paint- 
ing in that Temple cost $193, 750. The treas- 
ures of all nations and the spoils of kingdoms 
were kept here for safe deposit. Criminals 
from all lands fled to the shelter of this Tem- 
ple, and the law could not touch them. It 
seemed almost strange that this mountain of 
architectural snow outside did not melt with 
the fires of color within, The Temple was 
surrounded with groves, in which roamed for 
the temptation of hunters, stags and hares and 
wild boars, and all styles of game, whether 
winged or four-footed. There was a cave with 
statue so intensely brilliant that it extin- 



256 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

guished the eyes of those who looked upon it, 
unless, at the command of the priests, the 
hand of the spectator somewhat shaded the 
eyes. No wonder that even Anthony and 
Alexander and Darius cried out in the words 
of my text : 1 1 Great is Diana of the Ephe- 
sians. 1 ' 

One month of each year, the month of 
May, was devoted to her worship. Proces- 
sions in garbs of purple and violet and scarlet 
moved through the Temple, and there were 
torches, and anthems, and choirs in white, 
and timbrels and triangles in music, sacrifices 
and dances. Here young men and maidens 
were betrothed with imposing ceremony. 
Nations voted large amounts to meet the 
expense of the worship. Fisheries of vast 
resource were devoted to the support of this 
resplendence. Horace and Virgil and Homer 
went into rhapsodies while describing this wor- 
ship. All artists, all archaeologists, all cen- 
turies agreed in saying, c 4 Great is Diana of 



At Ephesus — The Temple of Diana. 257 

the Ephesians. ' ' Paul in the presence of this 
Temple of Diana incorporates it in his figures 
of speech while speaking of the spiritual tem- 
ple: u Now if any man build upon this 
foundation gold, silver, precious stones, etc.," 
and no doubt with reference to one of the 
previous temples which had been set on fire 
by Herostratus just for the fame of destroying 
it, Paul says : " If any man's work shall be 
burned, he shall suffer loss, etc. , ' ' and all up 
and down Paul's writings you realize that he 
had not only seen, but had been mightily im- 
pressed with what he had seen of the Temple 
of Diana. 

In this city the mother of Jesus was said to 
have been buried. Here dwelt Aquilla and 
Priscilla of Bible mention, who were professors 
in an extemporized theological seminary, and 
they taught the eloquent Apollos how to be 
eloquent for Christ. Here John preached, and 
from here because of his fidelity he was ex- 
iled to Patmos. Here Paul warred against 
17 



25$ From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 



the magical arts for which Ephesus was fa- 
mous. The sorcerers of this city pretended 
that they could cure diseases and perform 
almost any miracle, by pronouncing these 
senseless words : * k Aski Cataski Lix Tetrax 
Damnameneus Aision.^ Paul having per- 
formed a miracle in the name of Jesus, there 
was a lying family of seven brothers who imi- 
tated the apostle, and instead of their usual 
words of incantation, used the word Jesus 
over a man who was possessed of a devil, 
and the man possessed flew at them in great 
fierceness and nearly tore these frauds to 
pieces, and in consequence all up and down 
the streets of Ephesus there was indignation 
excited against the magical arts, and a great 
bonfire of magical books was kindled in the 
streets, and the people stirred the blaze until 
thirty -five thousand dollars' worth of black 
art literature were burned to ashes. 

But all the glory of Ephesus I have de- 
scribed has gone now. At some seasons of 



At Ephesns — The Temple of Diana. 259 

the year awful malarias sweep over the place 
and put upon mattress or in graves a large 
portion of the population. In the approxi- 
mate marshes scorpions, centipedes and all 
forms of reptilian life crawl and hiss and 
sting, while hyenas and jackals at night slink 
in and out of the ruins of buildings which 
once startled the nations with their almost 
supernatural grandeur. 

But here is a lesson which has never yet 
been drawn out. Do you not see in that Tem- 
ple of Diana an expression of what the world 
needs ? It wants a God who can provide food. 
Diana was a huntress. In pictures on many 
of the coins she held a stag by a horn with 
one hand and a bundle of arrows in the 
other. Oh, this is a hungry world! Diana 
could not give one pound of meat or one 
mouthful of food to the millions of her wor- 
shippers. She was a dead divinity, an imagi- 
nary God, and so in idolatrous lands the vast 
majority of people never have enough to eat. 



260 Fro7)i the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

It is only in the countries where the God of 
heaven and earth is worshipped that the vast 
majority have enough to eat. Let Diana have 
her arrows and her hounds; our God has the 
sunshine and the showers and the harvests, 
and in proportion as he is worshipped does 
plenty reign. 

So also in the Temple of Diana the world 
expressed its need of a refuge. To it from all 
parts of the land came debtors who could not 
pay their debts and the offenders of the law, 
that they might escape incarceration. But 
she sheltered them only a little while, and 
while she kept them from arrest she could not 
change their hearts and the guilty remained 
guilty. But our God in Jesus Christ is a sure 
refuge into which we may fly from all our 
sins and all our pursuers, and not only be safe 
for time but safe for eternity, and the guilt is 
pardoned and the nature is transformed. What 
Diana could not do for her worshippers, our 
Christ accomplishes for us. 



At Ephesus — The Temple of Dia?ia. 261 

" Rock of ages, cleft for me, 
Let me hide myself in thee." 

Then, in that Temple were deposited treas- 
ures from all the earth for safe keeping. 
Chrysostom says it was the treasure-house of 
nations; they brought gold and silver and 
precious stones and coronets from across the 
sea, and put them under the care of Diana of 
the Ephesians. But, again and again were 
those treasures ransacked, captured or de- 
stroyed. Nero robbed them, the Scythians 
scattered them, the Goths burned them. Diana 
'ailed those who trusted her with treasures, 
but our God, to Him we may entrust all our 
treasures for this world and the next, and fail 
any one who puts confidence in him he never 
will. After the last jasper column has fallen 
and the last temple on earth has gone into 
ruins and the world itself has suffered demoli- 
tion, the Lord will keep for us our best treas- 
ures. 

But, notice what killed Ephesus, and what 



262 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

has killed most of the cities that lie buried in 
the cemetery of nations. Luxury ! The 
costly baths, which had been the means of 
health to the city, became its ruin. Instead 
of the cold baths that had been the invigoration 
of the people, the hot baths, which are only 
intended for the infirm or the invalid, were 
substituted. In these hot baths many lay 
most of the time. Authors wrote books while 
in these baths. Business was neglected and a 
hot bath taken four or five times a day. When 
the keeper of the baths was reprimanded for 
not having them warm enough, one of the 
rulers said : 1 1 You blame him for not making 
the bath warm enough ; I blame you because 
you have it warm at all." But that warm 
bath, which enervated Ephesus and which is 
always enervating except when followed by 
cold baths (no reference, of course, to delicate 
constitutions), was only a type of what went 
on in all departments of Ephesian life, and in 
luxurious indulgence Ephesus fell, and the 



At Ephesus — The Temple of Diana, 263 

last triangle of music was tinkled in Diana's 
Temple, and the last wrestler disappeared 
from her gymnasiums, and the last racer took 
his garland in the Stadium, and the last plea 
was heard in her Forum, and, even the sea, as 
if to withdraw the last commercial opportu- 
nity from that metropolis, retreated down the 
beach, leaving her without the harbor in 
which had floated a thousand ships. Brooklyn, 
New York, London and all modern cities, cis- 
Atlantic and trans- Atlantic ! take warning. 
What luxury unguarded did for Ephesus lux- 
ury unguarded may do for all. Opulence and 
splendor God grant to all the people, to all 
the cities, to all the lands, but at the same 
time, may He grant the righteous use of 
them. 

Gymnasiums ? Yes, but see that the vigor 
gained in them be consecrated to God. Mag- 
nificent temples of worship? Yes, but see 
that in them instead of conventionalities and 
cold pomp of service, there be warmth of de- 



264 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis, 

votion and the pure Gospel preached. Impos- 
ing courthouses? Yes, but in them let jus- 
tice and mercy rule. Palaces of journalism ? 
Yes, but let all of the printing presses be mar- 
shalled for happiness and truth. Great post- 
office buildings ? Yes, but through them day 
by day, may correspondence helpful, elevat- 
ing and moral pass. Ornate dwelling-houses ? 
Yes, but in them let there be altars of devo- 
tion, and conjugal, filial, paternal and Chris- 
tian fidelity rule. London for magnitude, 
Berlin for universities, Paris for fashions, 
Rome for cathedrals, Athens for classics, 
Thebes for hieroglyphics, Memphis for tombs, 
Babylon for gardens, Ephesus for idolatry, but 
what shall be the characteristics of our Amer- 
ican cities when they shall have attained their 
full stature ? Would that 1 1 Holiness to the 
Lord M might be inscribed upon all our mu- 
nicipalities. One thing is certain, and that is, 
that all idolatry must come down. When the 
greatest goddess of the earth, Diana, en- 



At Ephesus — The Temple of Diana. 265 

shrined in the greatest temple that ever 
stood, was prostrated at Ephesus, it was a 
prophecy of the overthrow of all the idolatries 
that have cursed the earth, and anything we 
love more than God is an idol, and there is as 
much idolatry in the nineteenth century as in 
the first, and in America as in Asia. 

As our train pulled out from the station at 
Ephesus, the cars surrounded by the worst 
looking group of villains I ever gazed on, all 
of them seeming in a wrangle with each other 
and trying to get into a wrangle with us, and 
we moved along the columns of ancient aque- 
ducts, each column crowned with storks, hav- 
ing built their nests there, and we rolled on 
down towards Smyrna, and that night in a 
sailors' Bethel, we spoke of the Christ whom 
the world must know or perish, we felt that 
between cradle and grave there could not be 
anything much more enthralling for body, 
mind and soul, than our visit to Ephesus. 



&f)e Hctopolts, 



"While Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit 
was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly 
given to idolatry." — Acts xvii. 16. 



TT seemed as if morning would never come. 
A We had arrived after dark in Athens, 
Greece, and the night was sleepless with ex- 
pectation, and my watch slowly announced to 
me one and two and three and four o' clock ; 
and at the first ray of dawn, I called our 
party to look out of the window upon that 
city to which Paul said he was a debtor, and 
to which the whole earth is debtor for Greek 
architecture, Greek sculpture, Greek poetry, 
Greek eloquence, Greek prowess and Greek 
history. That morning in Athens we 
sauntered forth armed with most generous 
and lovely letters from the President of the 
(266) 



The Acropolis. 



267 



United States and his Secretary of State, and 
during all our stay in that city those letters 
caused every door and every gate and every 
temple and every palace to swing open before 
us. The mightiest geographical name on 
earth to-day is America. The signature of an 
American President and Secretary of State 
will take a man where an army could not. 
Those names brought us into the presence of 
a most gracious and beautiful sovereign, the 
Queen of Greece, and her cordiality was more 
like that of a sister than the occupant of a 
throne-room. No formal bow as when mon- 
archs are approached, but a cordial shake of 
the hand, and. earnest questions about our 
personal welfare and our beloved country far 
away. But this morning we pass through 
where stood the Agora, the ancient market- 
place, the locality where philosophers used to 
meet their disciples, walking while they 
talked, and where Paul the Christian logician 
flung many a proud Stoic, and got the laugh 



268 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

on many an impertinent Epicurean. The 
market-place was the centre of social and po- 
litical life, and it was the place where people 
went to tell and hear the news. Booths and 
bazaars were set up for merchandise of all 
kinds, except meat, but everything must be 
sold for cash, and there must be no lying about 
the value of commodities, and the Agoranomi 
who ruled the place could inflict severe 
punishment upon offenders. The different 
schools of thinkers had distinct places set 
apart for convocation. The Platseans must 
meet at the cheese market, the Decelians at 
the barber shop, the sellers of perfumes at the 
frankincense headquarters. The market-place 
was a space three hundred and fifty yards 
long and two hundred and fifty wide, and it 
was given up to gossip and merchandise, and 
lounging, and philosophizing. All this you 
need to know in order to understand the Bible 
when it says of Paul, " Therefore disputed he 
in the market daily with them that met him. 1 9 



The Acropolis. 269 



You see it was the best place to get an audi- 
ence, and if a man feels himself called to 
preach he wants people to preach to. But be- 
fore we make our chief visits of to-day we 
must take a turn at the Stadium. It is a lit- 
tle way out, but go we must. The Stadium 
was the place where the foot-races occurred. 

Paul had been out there, 110 doubt, for he 
frequently uses the scenes of that place as 
figures when he tells us, 4 4 Let us run the 
race that is set before us," and again, " They 
do it to obtain a corruptible garland, but we 
an incorruptible. ) 1 The marble and the gild- 
ing have been removed, but the high mounds 
against which the seats were piled are still 
there. The Stadium is six hundred and 
eighty feet long, one hundred and thirty feet 
wide, and held forty thousand spectators. 
There is to-day the very tunnel through which 
the defeated racer departed from the Stadium 
and from the hisses of the people, and there 
are the stairs up which the victor went to the 



270 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

top of the hill to be crowned with the laurel. 
In this place contests with wild beasts some- 
times took place, and while Hadrian, the em- 
peror, sat on yonder height, one thousand 
beasts were slain in one celebration. But it 
was chiefly for foot-racing, and so I pro- 
posed to my friend that day while we were in 
the Stadium that we try which of us could 
run the sooner from end to end of this his- 
torical ground, and so at the word given by 
the lookers-on we started side by side, but be- 
fore I got through I found out what Paul 
meant when he compares the spiritual race 
with the race in this very Stadium, as he says, 
"Lay aside every weight. n My heavy over- 
coat and my friend's freedom from such en- 
cumbrance showed the advantage in any kind 
of a race of laying aside 4 1 every weight 1 ' 

We come now to the Acropolis. It is a 
rock about two miles in circumference at the 
base and a thousand feet in circumference at 
the top, and three hundred feet high. On it 



The Acropolis. 



271 



has been crowded more elaborate architecture 
and sculpture than in any other place under 
the whole heavens. Originally a fortress, 
afterward a congregation of temples and 
statues and pillars, their ruins an enchantment 

I from which no observer ever breaks away. 

I No wonder that Aristides thought it the cen- 
tre of all things — Greece, the centre of the 
world; Attica, the centre of Greece; Athens, 
the centre of Attica, and the Acropolis, the 

I centre of Athens. Earthquakes have shaken 
it; Verres plundered it. Lord Elgin, the 

j English ambassador at Constantinople, got 
permission of the Sultan to remove from the 
Acropolis fallen pieces of the building, but he 
took from the building to England the finest 
statues, removing them at an expense of eight 
hundred thousand dollars. A storm overthrew 
many of the statues of the Acropolis. Moro- 
sini, the general, attempted to remove from a 
pediment the sculptured car and horses ©f 
Victory, but the clumsy machinery dropped 

1 

1 

1 



272 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

it, and all was lost. The Turks turned the 
building into a powder magazine, where the 
Venetian guns dropped a fire that by explo- 
sion sent the columns flying in the air and 
falling cracked and splintered. But after all 
that time and storm and war and iconoclasm 
have effected, the Acropolis is the monarch 
of all ruins, and before it bow the learning, 
the genius, the poetry, the art, the history of 
the ages. I saw it as it was thousands of 
years ago. I had read so much about it and 
dreamed so much about it, that I needed no 
magician's wand to restore it. At one wave 
of my hand on that clear morning in 1889, it 
rose before me in the glory it had when 
Pericles ordered it, and Ictinus planned it, 
and Phidias chiselled it, and Protogenes 
painted it, and Pausanias described it. Its 
gates, which were carefully guarded by the 
ancients, open to let you in, and you ascend 
by sixty marble steps to the Propylsea, which 
Epaminondas wanted to transfer to Thebes, 



The Acropolis. 



273 



but permission, I am glad to say, could not be 
granted for the removal of this architectural 
miracle. In the days when ten cents would 
do more than a dollar now, the building cost 
two million three hundred thousand dollars. 
See its five ornamented gates, the keys en- 
trusted to an officer for only one day lest the 
temptation to go in and misappropriate the 
treasures be too great for him; its ceiling a 
mingling of blue and scarlet and green, and 
the walls abloom with pictures utmost in 
thought and coloring. Yonder is a temple to 
a goddess called 1 1 Victory Without Wings. ' ' 
So many of the triumphs of the world had 
been followed by defeat that the Greeks 
wished in marble to indicate that victory for 
Athens had come never again to fly away, and 
hence this temple to " Victory Without 
Wings, n — a temple of marble, snow-white 
and glittering. Yonder behold the pedestal 
of Agrippa, twenty-seven feet high and twelve 

feet square. But the overshadowing wonder 
18 



274 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

of all the hill is the Parthenon. In days 
when money was ten times more valuable 
than now, it cost $4,600,000. It is a Doric 
grandeur, having forty-six columns, each 
column thirty-four feet high and six feet two 
inches in diameter. Wondrous intercolumni- 
ations! Painted porticoes, architraves tinged 
with ochre, shields of gold hung up, lines of 
most delicate curve, figures of horses and men 
and women and gods, oxen on the way to 
sacrifice, statues of the deities Dionysius, Pro- 
metheus, Hermes, Demeter, Zeus, Hera, 
Poseidon; in one frieze twelve divinities; cen- 
taurs in battle; weaponry from Marathon; 
chariot of night; chariot of the morning; 
horses of the sun, the fates, the furies; statue 
of Jupiter holding in his righ t hand the thun- 
derbolt; silver- footed chair in which Xerxes 
watched the battle of Salamis, only a few 
miles away. Here is the colossal statue of 
Minerva in full armor, eyes of gray-colored 
sto&e; figure of a Sphinx on her head, griffins 



The Acropolis. 



275 



by her side (which are lions with eagle's 
beak), spear in one hand, statue of Liberty in 
the other, a shield carved with battle scenes, 
and even the slippers sculptured and tied on 
with thongs of gold. Far out at sea the 
sailors saw this statue of Minerva rising high 
above all the temples, glittering in the sun. 
Here are statues of equestrians, statue of a 
lioness, and there are the Graces, and yonder 
a horse in bronze. There is a statue said in 
the time of Augustus to have of its own accord 
turned around from east to west and spit 
blood; statues made out of shields conquered 
in battle; statue of Apollo, the expeller of 
locusts; statue of Anacreon, drunk and sing- 
ing; statue of Olympiodorus, a Greek, memor- 
able for the fact that he was cheerful when 
others were cast down, a trait wortlty of sculp- 
ture. But, walk on and around the Acropolis, 
and yonder you see a statue of Hygeia, and 
the statue of Theseus fighting the Minotaur 
and the statue of Hercules slaying serpents. 



276 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

No wonder that Petronius said it was easier 
to find a god than a man in Athens. Oh, the 
Acropolis! The most of its temples and 
statues made from the marble quarries of 
Mount Pentelicum, a little way from the city. 
I have here on my table a block of the Parthe- 
non made out of this marble, and on it is the 
sculpture of Phidias. I brought it from the 
Acropolis. This specimen has on it the dust 
of ages, and the marks of explosion and bat- 
tle, but you can get from it some idea of the 
delicate lustre of the Acropolis when it was 
covered with a mountain of this marble cut 
into all the exquisite shapes that genius could 
contrive, and striped with silver and aflame 
with gold. The Acropolis in the morn- 
ing light of those ancients must have 
shone as though it were an aerolite cast off 
from the noonday sun. The temples must 
have looked like petrified foam. The whole 
Acropolis must have seemed like the white 
breakers of the great ocean of time. 



The Acropolis. 



277 



But we cannot stop longer here, for there is 
a hill nearby of more interest, though it has 
not one chip of marble to suggest a statue or 
a temple. We hasten down the Acropolis to 
ascend the Areopagus, or Mars Hill, as it is 
called. It took only about three minutes to 
walk the distance, and the two hill tops are so 
near that what I said in religious discourse on 
Mars Hill was heard distinctly by some Eng- 
lish gentlemen on the Acropolis. This Mars 
Hill is a rough pile of rock fifty feet high. It 
was famous long before New Testament times. 
The Persians easily and terribly assaulted the 
Acropolis from this hill top. Here assembled 
the court to try criminals. It was held in the 
night time, so that the faces of the judges 
could not be seen, nor the faces of the lawyers 
who made the plea, and so, instead of a trial 
being one of emotion, it must have been one 
of cool justice. But there was one occasion 
on this hill memorable above all others. A 
little man, physically weak, and his rhetoric, 



278 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

described by himself as contemptible, had by 
his sermons rocked Athens with commotion, 
and he was summoned either by writ of law 
or hearty invitation to come upon that pulpit 
of rock and give a specimen of his theology. 
All the wiseacres of Athens turned out and 
turned up to hear him. The more venerable 
of them sat in an amphitheatre, the granite 
seats of which are still visible, but the other 
people swarmed on all sides of the hill and at 
the base of it to hear this man, whom some 
called a fanatic, and others called a madcap, 
and others a blasphemer, and others styled 
contemptuously " this fellow. M In that audi- 
ence were the first orators of the world, and 
they had voices like flutes when they were 
passive and like trumpets when they were 
aroused, and I think they laughed in the 
sleeves of their gowns as this insignificant- 
looking man rose to speak. In that audience 
were Scholiasts, who knew everything, or 
thought they did, and from the end of the 



The Acropolis, 



279 



longest hair on the top of their craniums to 
the end of the nail on the longest toe, they 
were stuffed with hypercriticism, and they 
leaned back with a supercilious look to listen. 
As in 1889, I stood on that rock where Paul 
stood, and a slab of which I brought from 
Athens by consent of the Queen, through Mr. 
Tricoupis, the prime minister, and had 
placed in yonder memorial wall, I read the 
whole story, Bible in hand. 

What I have so far said in this discourse 
was necessary in order that you may under- 
stand the boldness, the defiance, the holy reck- 
lessness, the magnificence of Paul's speech. 
The first thunderbolt he launched at the 
opposite hill — Acropolis — that moment all 
aglitter with idols and temples. He cries out, 
( ' God who made the world. ' ' Why, they 
thought that Prometheus made it, that Mer- 
cury made it, that Apollo made it, that Posei- 
don made it, that Eros made it, that Pandro- 
cus made it, that Boreas made it, that it took 



280 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

all the gods of the Parthenon, yea, all the 
gods and goddesses of the Acropolis to make 
it, and here stands a man without any eccles- 
iastical title, neither a D. D. , nor even a rev- 
erend, declaring that the world was made by 
the lyord of heaven and earth, and hence the 
inference that all the splendid covering of the 
Acropolis, so near that the people standing on 
the steps of the Parthenon could hear it, was 
a deceit, a falsehood, a sham, a blasphemy. 
Oh, Paul, stop for a moment and give these 
startled and overwhelmed auditors time to 
catch their breath! Make a rhetorical pause! 
Take a look around you at the interesting 
landscape, and give your hearers time to re- 
cover! No, he does not make even a period, 
or so much as a colon or semi-colon, but 
launches the second thunderbolt right after the 
first, and in the same breath goes on to say, 
4 4 God dwelleth not in temples made with 
hands. ' ' Oh, Paul ! is not deity more in the 
Parthenon, or more in the Theseum, or more 



The Acropolis, 



in the Erechtheum, or more in the temple of 
Zeus Olympius than in the open air, more 
than on the hill where we are sitting, more 
than on Mount Hymettus out yonder, from 
which the bees get their honey. u No more!" 
responds Paul; u He dwelleth not in temples 
made with hands. ' ' 

But surely the preacher on the pulpit of 
rock on Mars Hill will stop now. His au- 
dience can endure no more. Two thunder- 
bolts are enough. No, in the same breath he 
launches the third thunderbolt, which, to 
them, is more fiery, more terrible, more de- 
molishing than the others, as he cries out, 
4 4 Hath made of one blood all nations. ' ' Oh, 
Paul! you forget you are speaking to the 
proudest and most exclusive audience in the 
world. Do not say ' 4 of one blood. ' J You 
cannot mean that. Had Socrates and Plato, 
and Demosthenes, and Solon, and Lycurgus, 
and Draco, and Sophocles, and Euripides, and 
^Eschylus and Pericles, and Phidias, and Mil- 



282 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

tiades, blood just like the Persians, like the 
Turks, like the Egyptians, like the common 
herd of humanity ? " Yes," says Paul, 11 of 
one blood, all nations. } 1 

Surely that must be the closing paragraph 
of the sermon. His auditors must be let up 
from the nervous strain. Paul has smashed 
the Acropolis and smashed the national pride 
of the Greeks, and what more can he say ? 
Those Grecian orators, standing on that place, 
always closed their addresses with something 
sublime and climacteric, a peroration, and 
Paul is going to give them a peroration which 
will eclipse in power and majesty all that he 
has yet said. Heretofore he has hurled one 
thunderbolt at a time; now, he will close by 
hurling two at once — the two thunderbolts of 
Resurrection and Last Judgment. His closing 
words were: "Because he hath appointed a 
day, in the which he will judge the world in 
righteousness by that man whom he hath or- 
dained ; whereof he hath given assurance 



The Acropolis. 



283 



unto all men, in that he hath raised him from 
the dead. " Remember those thoughts were 
to them novel and provocative: that Christ, 
the despised Nazarene, would come to be their 
judge, and they should have to get up out of 
their cemeteries to stand before him and take 
their eternal doom. Mightiest burst of elo- 
cutionary power ever heard. At those two 
thoughts of Resurrection and Judgment, the 
audience sprang to their feet. Some moved 
they adjourn to some other day to hear more 
on the same theme, but others would have torn 
the sacred orator to pieces. The record says, 
i i some mocked. ' ' I suppose it means that 
they mimicked the solemnity of his voice, 
that they took off his impassioned gesticula- 
tion, and they cried out : u Jew! Jew! Where 
did you study rhetoric ? You ought to hear 
our orators speak! You had better go back to 
your business of tent-making. Our L,ycurgus 
knew more in a minute than you will know in 
a month. Say, where did you get that 
crooked back and those weak eyes from? Ha! 
Ha! You try to teach us Grecians! What 
nonsense you talk about when you speak of 



284 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

Resurrection and Judgment. Now, little old 
man, climb down the side of Mars Hill and 
get out of sight as soon as possible. n u Some 
mocked." But that scene adjourned to the 
day of which the sacred orator had spoken — 
the day of Resurrection and Judgment. 

As in Athens, that evening in 1889, we 
climbed down the pile of slippery rocks, 
where all this had occurred, on our way back to 
our hotel, I stood half way between the 
Acropolis and Mars Hill in the gathering 
shadows of eventide, I seemed to hear those 
two hills in sublime and awful converse. 4 1 I 
am chiefly of the past, n said the Acropolis. 
U I am chiefly of the future, " replied Mars 
Hill. The Acropolis said: " My orators are 
dead. My law-givers are dead. My poets are 
dead. My architects are dead. My sculptors 
are dead. I am a monument of the dead 
past. I shall never again hear a song sung. 
I shall never again see a column lifted. I 
shall never again behold a goddess crcwned. ' ' 
Mars Hill responded: "I, too, have had a 
history. I had on my heights warriors who 
will never again unsheath the sword, and 



The Acropolis. 285 

judges who will never again utter a doom, and 
orators who will never again make a plea. 
But my influence is to be more in the future 
than it ever was in the past. Oh, Acropolis! 
I have stood here long enough to witness that 
your gods are no gods at all. Your Boreas 
could not control the winds. Your Neptune 
could not manage the sea. Your Apollo never 
evoked a musical note. Your goddess Ceres 
never grew a harvest. Your goddess of wisdom, 
Minerva, never knew the Greek alphabet 
Your Jupiter could not handle the lightnings. 
But the God whom I proclaimed on the day 
when Paul preached before the astounded as- 
semblage on my rough heights, is the God of 
music, the God of wisdom, the God of power, 
the God of mercy, the God of love, the God 
of storms, the God of sunshine, the God of 
the land and the God of the sea, the God 
over all, blessed forever. 1 1 Then, the Acropolis 
spake and said, as though in self-defence: 
' My Plato argued for the immortality of the 
soul, and my Socrates praised virtue, and my 
Miltiades at Marathon drove back the Persian 
oppressors. M " Yes, ' ' said Mars Hill, 4 4 your 



286 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis. 

Plato laboriously guessed at the immortality 
of the soul, but my Paul, divinely inspired, 
declared it as a fact straight from God. Your 
Socrates praised virtue but expired as a sui- 
cide. Your Miltiades was brave against earth- 
ly foes, yet died from a wound ignominiously 
gotten in after-defeat. But my Paul chal- 
lenged all earth and all hell with this battle- 
shout, 4 We wrestle not against flesh and 
blood, but against principalities, against pow- 
ers, against the rulers of the darkness of this 
world, against spiritual wickedness in high 
places,' and then, on the 29th of June, in the 
year 66, on the road to Ostia, after the sword 
of the headsman had given one keen stroke, 
took the crown of martyrdom. ' 1 

After a moment's silence by both hills, the 
Acropolis moaned out in the darkness, u Alas! 
Alas!" and Mars Hill responded, u Hosannah! 
Hosannah!" Then the voices of both hills be- 
came indistinct, and as I passed on and away 
in the twilight, I seemed to hear only two 
sounds — a fragment of Pentelicon marble from 
the architrave of the Acropolis dropping down 
on the ruins of a shattered idol, and the other 



The Acropolis. 



287 



sound seemed to come from the rock on Mars 
Hill, from which we had just descended. But 
we were by this time so far off that the frag- 
ments of sentences were smaller when drop- 
ping from Mars Hill than were the fragments 
of fallen marble on the Acropolis, and I could 
only hear parts of disconnected sentences 
wafted on the night air — u God who made the 
world " — u of one blood all nations " — u ap- 
pointed a day in which he will judge the 
world " — " raised him from the dead. n 

As that night in Athens I put my tired 
head on my pillow, and the exciting scenes of 
the day passed through my mind, I thought 
on the same subject on which as a boy I made 
my Commencement speech in Niblo's Theatre 
on Graduation Day from the New York Uni- 
versity, viz: "The moral effects of sculpture 
and architecture, M but further than I could 
have thought in boyhood, I thought in Athens 
that night that the moral effects of architec- 
ture and sculpture depend on what you do in 
great buildings after they are put up, and 
upon the character of the men whose forms 
you cut in the marble. Yea, I thought that 



288 From the Pyramids to the Acropolis, 

night what struggles the martyrs went through 
in order that in our time the Gospel might 
have full swing; and I thought that night 
what a brainy religion it must be that could 
absorb a hero like him whom we have con- 
sidered to-day, a man the superior of the 
whole human race, the infidels but pigmies or 
homunculi compared with him ; and I thought 
what a rapturous consideration it is that 
through the same grace that saved Paul, we 
shall confront this great Apostle and shall 
have the opportunity, amid the familiarities of 
the skies, of asking him what was the greatest 
occasion of all his life. He may say, 1 1 The 
shipwreck of Melita." He may say, " The 
riot at Ephesus. 1 1 He may say, ' 1 My last 
walk out on the road to Ostia. 1 ' But I think 
he will say, 1 1 The day I stood on Mars Hill 
addressing the indignant Areopagites, and 
looking off upon the towering form of the 
goddess Minerva, and the majesty of the Par- 
thenon, and all the brilliant divinities of the 
Acropolis. That account in the Bible was 
true. My spirit was stirred within me when 
I saw the city wholly given up to idolatry.' ' 



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